The 10-2 New England Patriots came back from a ten-day rest on Monday night of December 1 to play the 2-10 New York Giants. After four quarters of football, New England crushed New York 33-15. Quarterback Drake Maye, a star in his sophomore season, finished the game 24-31 (77.4% completion) with 282 yards and two touchdown passes. This was the 10th consecutive win for the Patriots. Still, the contention around the team persists: are the Patriots actually a great football team?
Last year (and the year before), the Patriots finished 4-13, last in the AFC East and among the last in the whole NFL. After a series of big moves and signings in the off-season, most notably head coach Mike Vrabel, a former Patriots linebacker, with more important signings including veteran wide receiver Stefon Diggs, veteran cornerback Carlton Davis III, former Eagles defensive lineman Milton Williams, linebacker Robert Spillane, and several others, expectations for the team were the highest they had been in years. And yet, nobody, not even myself, would have predicted this level of performance. Simply put, most teams don’t go 11-2 with 10 consecutive wins. But the 2025 New England Patriots do.
Under the leadership of Vrabel, the Patriots have shown no signs of slowing down. The decisive win against the Giants further shows this. After their bye week, the Patriots will take on their bitter division rival in the Buffalo Bills, another true test for the team and for Vrabel’s aforementioned leadership.
The most common counterargument against this always refers to the Patriots’ historically weak schedule. According to the official website of the NFL, the Patriots have a strength of schedule (SoS) of .429, meaning that the teams they’ve played have a combined winning percentage of 42.9%, the third weakest schedule in the entire league. Even teams like the Titans, the Jets, and the Dolphins have more difficult schedules.
On the surface, this seems like a strong argument against the Patriots this season. However, one question weakens this argument: Who was saying at the beginning of the season that the Patriots would go 11-2 into December? We all knew what the schedule looked like, and yet nobody said, “The Patriots are going to win a lot of games this year.” They lost to the Jaguars and the Dolphins last year, and yet this year, they are handily beating those same teams.
Nobody expected the Patriots to be this good.
“I’m actually surprised about how they are performing now. Especially since the past few seasons, they’ve played really horrendously.” He continued, “And then it’s kind of out of the blue, they start performing really well. I knew that they had good players this season, but it’s a complete shift,” says Joshua Fan, a student here at ERHS.
Fan also addressed the argument against the Patriots, “I mean, you can’t deny it. They’re not playing with the best teams, obviously. But they’ve played these… bad teams before and sometimes lost… Now they’re crushing them.”
Another football fan, Rosauro Hernandez, an English teacher, also expressed his views on the Patriots’ current season.
“Yeah, I was surprised. They were one of the worst teams record-wise last year. But I’m not surprised about Drake Maye,” Hernandez said. “In the draft, I thought he was going to be one of the better quarterbacks. Now, he’s one of the most accurate with his deep ball, and it looks like he has leadership skills, too.”
He also shared his frustrations as a Minnesota fan, “I’m happy for him, but also mad. He should have been a Viking.”
When asked about his thoughts on the Patriots’ potential playoff run, he said, “Okay, so the AFC is wide open. I can’t say certainly… I think they have to be one of the favorites for the divisional round.”
Despite the argument against the Patriots, many football fans see their potential. Drake Maye is undoubtedly an exciting player to watch as he shreds defenses every Sunday. The simple fact is that the Patriots are a very good and formidable team that will be difficult to beat in the playoffs.
