Drake Maye smiles confidently during a Patriots game.
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Drake Maye celebrates a Patriots victory — could the NFL schedule twist fuel a Super Bowl LXI return?
No NFL team has ever won a Super Bowl after playing an international game in the same season, even with the league playing at least 60 games outside of the United States since its current International Series began in 2005. In fact, only three teams that played overseas even got to the Super Bowl at all. All three lost.
An NFL announcement on Wednesday, as a result, was one more indication that for the second year in a row, the New England Patriots could be spared an overseas trip for one of the NFL’s record nine international games in the 2026 season. If that turns out to be the case, history shows that the Patriots will eliminate one obstacle to getting back to the Super Bowl.
The Patriots, of course, shocked the NFL by advancing to Super Bowl LX last season, and while it’s debatable whether the Patriots “easy” schedule was the determining factor in their Cinderella run that ended with a loss to the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL’s biggest game, there seems little doubt that it was one of the factors.
In the regular season, New England played what was, according to TeamRankings.com, the 32nd most difficult schedule of any NFL team — in other words, the easiest.
After playing their four postseason games, defeating the Los Angeles Chargers, Houston Texans and Denver Broncos before falling to Seattle, the Patriots’ schedule difficulty rose to 30th in the NFL overall.
Patriots Also Had Easy Travel Schedule
But it wasn’t only the relative strength of their opponents that aided the Patriots on their way to the Super Bowl — and an overall 17-4 record after finishing with just four wins in each of the previous two seasons — it was the schedule itself, as measured by the relatively new field of “fatigue science.”
A study by the publication Sportsbook Review came up with “a weekly fatigue score for every team based on travel distance, rest days, time zone changes, circadian misalignment, altitude, and progressive wear and tear before adding it up across all 18 weeks to determine which teams face the most grueling schedules in 2025.”
By the metrics used by Sportsbook Review, the Patriots played the second-least fatiguing schedule of any team in the NFL, with a fatigue score of 68.1. For comparison, the team with the most grueling schedule was the Los Angeles Rams, who scored 105.9 on the Sportsbook Review fatigue index.
For the Patriots, the 2026 schedule already looks to be somewhat tougher in terms of fatigue factors, with two separate cross-country trips, with their three-hour time changes, to face the Seahawks and Chargers. An international game would add another, more drastic time-zone shift as well as thousands of extra travel miles, both factors in creating fatigue.
Patriots Have Four Chances at Overseas Trip
The NFL on Wednesday announced that the San Francisco 49ers will play not one but two international games, first opening the season in Melbourne, Australia — not only 19 hours ahead of San Francisco but nearly 8,000 miles by air, more than the length of two cross-country domestic flights.
The 49ers will also play a game in Mexico City, but because the NFL has already announced that the ‘Niners are not on the New England schedule in 2026, the Patriots will not be the opponent in either game.
Teams have also been revealed for games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Paris, France. But neither of those teams — the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints — are Patriots opponents either. And according to New York journalist Gary Myers, the Giants will play the NFL’s game in Munich, Germany. But the Giants are not on the Patriots schedule, either.
That leaves just the NFL’s three London games and one in Paris, France. If the Patriots can avoid being named to play in any of these four games, their chances of returning to the Super Bowl get a boost.