Steeped in 21st-century success, the Patriots generally embrace history repeating itself, especially with regard to Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye matching the coach-quarterback secret sauce cooked up by the canonized tandem of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.
But there’s one track on the Belichick-Brady masters that Vrabel and Maye don’t want to repeat as they enter the 2026 season — the Super Bowl backslide.
The challenge for Vrabel and Maye coming off a charmed and revelatory 2025 season that saw the Patriots transformed from 4-13 nobodies to 14-3 Super Bowl participants is to avoid what happened to Belichick and Brady after their breakout first Super Bowl season — missing the playoffs.
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As brilliant as Brady and Belichick were in their singular careers, they weren’t prepared for what they faced in the follow-up act, for what Maye and Vrabel — who played on the 2001 Super Bowl winners and the 2002 Patriots — will encounter this season in their respective roles.
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It’s like going from Cinderella to a Jenner (pick ’em, Kylie or Kendall). Everyone is paying close attention to you now, envies your success, and relishes taking you down a peg to prop themselves up. It’s a whole different ballgame being the hunted.
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The NFL is engineered for teams such as the Patriots to fall back, so some other franchise can rise from the ashes.
“Sustained success in the National Football League is tough, difficult. We know that the system isn’t set up for that,” said Vrabel.
Related: The Patriots’ road to the Super Bowl looks far more difficult this season
Amen. The 2002 Patriots lived this. They slogged through an inconsistent 9-7 season that included the only four-game losing streak Brady and Belichick endured with Brady as a starter. It marked the only year in his gilded career that a healthy Brady-quarterbacked club failed to make the playoffs, as the Patriots lost out on the division title on the last day of the season to the Jets.
After capturing their first Super Bowl, Tom Brady and the Patriots struggled through a rough 2002 season, finishing 9-7 and missing the playoffs — the killer blow a 30-17 loss to the Jets in Foxborough in Week 16.
After capturing their first Super Bowl, Tom Brady and the Patriots struggled through a rough 2002 season, finishing 9-7 and missing the playoffs — the killer blow a 30-17 loss to the Jets in Foxborough in Week 16.
It was also the only season post-2000, when Brady was an unknown, nacho-eating, fourth-string rookie, that Belichick and Brady failed to win at least 10 games.
Vrabel has worked assiduously to free the current Patriots from the ever-present shadow of the past. But those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. For example, the 2002 club faced issues stopping the run, ranking second-to-last in run defense. That’s a concern that popped up for the current Patriots this preseason following the departure of run plugger Khyiris Tonga.
After the Super Bowl LX loss to the Seahawks, New England’s opponent in Wednesday’s season opener, Vrabel referenced that the Patriots were still in the program-building phase. They’re not viewed as a work-in-progress. They carry the expectations of a fully formed contender.
“I think that thing — the expectations — always get higher, and we have tried to lay out the expectations when we got here, and what we wanted to do,” said Vrabel.
“I think just the nature of the NFL and based on success, the rules, the draft, the schedule, all those things that come into it, [it’s difficult]. It’s our job to re-create the things that we did really well last year: the culture, the ability to win different ways, find ways to win, understand how to win, understand how to prepare.
“We’re going to have a more difficult journey. That’s what we’re expecting.”
Related: The Patriots’ running back depth could be tested right away, and other thoughts ahead of the season opener
Perhaps, no Patriot shoulders more pressure to match last year’s performance than Maye, who looks like Brady’s rightful heir to the Foxborough franchise quarterback throne and the face of Boston sports.
Maye should’ve captured the NFL MVP award last season. He broke the franchise record for completion percentage, leading the league at 72 percent, and also led the league in passer rating (113.5) while throwing 31 touchdown passes and rushing for four scores. Maye finished second in the MVP ballot to sentimental favorite Matthew Stafford.
Implicit in that vote was the presumption that the 24-year-old Maye will post plenty of MVP-caliber seasons.
The 2002 campaign marked Brady’s first full season as a starter after he relieved Drew Bledsoe in 2001 and changed the fortunes of a star-crossed franchise and an entire sports-mad region. Brady produced some uneven performances but led the NFL in touchdown passes with 28 (boy, how times have changed). He established himself as more than a football fluke.
Maye carries the expectations of solidifying top-five QB status, especially with the addition of wideout A.J. Brown. The Patriots are putting more mentally on Maye’s plate, with intentions to go up-tempo with greater frequency, and the expectation that he’ll display a beautiful mind in the cat-and-mouse games at the line of scrimmage Brady excelled at.
“I feel like we had a great camp, and we know we’ve got a little target on our back,” Maye said in an interview with Amazon Prime in the preseason finale. “But we’ve got to put in the work, and we’ve got to prove that last year wasn’t just … a one-hit wonder.”
That’s the challenge for Vrabel and Maye. Prove that last year was the start of a new chapter of sustained championship contention, not a singular storybook season.
Matt Light called 2002 a wake-up call. “I think we’re going to be better prepared for dealing with the things we had to deal with defending a Super Bowl in the future,” Light told the late, great Nick Cafardo.
Light was right. A dynasty was born the next season. The 2002 season ultimately faded as a football footnote.
This is one time Vrabel and Maye hope not to follow in the footsteps of Belichick and Brady.