Support WBUR
Essay
'We all we got': We've never seen anything like these Patriots
With about seven minutes left in the AFC Championship game, and his team nursing a precarious three-point lead, 23-year-old superstar quarterback Drake Maye let himself feel the weight of the moment.
“It’s hard,” Maye said on the sideline, as captured by NFL Films. “My God.”
The man he was talking to? Longtime Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels.
Anyone who’s followed the New England Patriots over the years or attended one of their practices knows McDaniels is not the warm, fuzzy type. He ran the Patriots’ offense under legendary coach Bill Belichick’s watchful eye for more than a decade, and coached one of the most intense competitors football has ever seen in Tom Brady.
As a Patriots beat reporter in 2021, I personally watched him eviscerate players for mistakes in practice almost every day, including then-rookie running back Rhamondre Stevenson, who still starts for New England four years later.
But in this tense moment, with his young quarterback struggling, McDaniels knelt by Maye’s side and lifted him up.
“It's gonna be hard,” McDaniels said, “but look, this will be the most rewarding six-and-a-half minutes of our lives if we can get it done.”
Minutes later, they made it happen in the most 2025 Patriots way possible: McDaniels and Maye fooling everyone, including their own offense, sneaking Maye around the edge for a game-clinching first-down run, sending the Pats back to the Super Bowl.
This was not ruthlessly precise like the Belichick days, or as surgically statuesque as Brady. In fact, it was a play McDaniels would never have dreamed of calling for Brady with the game on the line.
That’s because McDaniels, Maye and the Patriots are in a new era.
Aside from them bringing back their classic silver pants this season — a staple of their dynasty years — nothing about this Patriots team feels like it did in the Brady-Belichick heyday. (And of course, they’re going off-script for the Super Bowl, donning their all-white “road warrior” uniforms despite technically being the home team.)
No one, not even the most diehard fans, could have predicted this team would make a Super Bowl. (I know because I’ve listened to diehard fans tell me exactly that.)
On the other hand, Patriots haters across the nation are crashing out over the fact that New England has already re-established itself as one of the NFL’s best teams, just six years after Brady left the team.
It’s a shame. Because this Patriots team might actually be one of the greatest underdog stories this league has ever seen.
They came into this season nowhere close to the most talented or experienced team in the league. They were just coming off two 4-13 seasons in a row—tied for the seventh-worst winning percentages in the franchise’s 66-year history. They had a new head coach (Mike Vrabel) and second-year quarterback (Maye), the latter of which showed promise last season but, we assumed, might still need time to come into his own.
So naturally, they set the league on fire, winning 14 regular-season games and grinding their way through three of the NFL’s toughest defenses to make the Super Bowl. The Patriots could become just the second team ever, along with the 1999 St. Louis Rams, to win a title a year after finishing last in their division and winning fewer than five games.
Now the Seattle Seahawks — who are by most measures clearly the best team in football — await them, just as they did in the 2015 Super Bowl matchup. No logical expert would pick the Patriots to win this game. And they don’t care. Because, as they would tell you: “We all we got. We all we need.”
For years under Belichick, it was “Do your job” or “No days off.” A relentless, ruthless pursuit of victory led by one of the most cutthroat coaches the NFL has ever seen, and his equally maniacal quarterback. And it worked for almost 20 years.
But nothing lasts forever. That dynasty finally collapsed under the strain of trying to hold it up. Brady sought greener pastures in Tampa Bay, winning a seventh Super Bowl championship, and Belichick’s act eventually wore thin in Foxborough as the post-Brady losses mounted, leading to his departure.
The old way simply wasn’t working anymore. So Vrabel, who won three rings under Belichick as a player but carved his own unique path as a coach, created a new one.
He runs off from postgame interviews so he can high-five players heading into the Patriots locker room. He stands by them in good times and bad, as he did with Stevenson amid the running back’s early-season fumbling problems. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, liable to leap into a training camp practice fight or give you a bone-crushing hug after a win.
Sure, none of it would matter if the Patriots had gone 4-13 again this year as opposed to 14-3. But that’s the beauty of a sometimes barbaric game like football. The smallest things matter every single play. One right or wrong step, one moment of indecision, or one half-second of extra effort can be the razor-thin margin between a win and a loss.
And Vrabel, seemingly, has made sure that no matter what each play brings, his players believe, with every fiber of their being, that they will win — not because they’re more talented, but because they’re a team in the truest sense, playing for the guy next to them.
Now, the most “fun” team in Patriots history has put themselves at the doorstep of immortality. And they’re bringing fans along for the ride.
This segment aired on February 5, 2026.
