PostGame Thread 2025 OFFICIAL POSTGAME THREAD: Patriots 28, Texans 16

Uptown · Jan 19, 2026

Stroud was so bad yesterday, he literally threw a no-contact hospital ball to TE Cade Stover lol

aluminum seats · Jan 19, 2026

Ring 6 said:
I just don’t think you put the blame on the qb when pass rushers aren’t blocked and hit his arm while he is throwing

Fair. But I also don’t think you can have your quarterback fumbling four times, he does take a bit of responsibility for that, to be aware, to sense the rush and take a sack in some of those instances

Ring 6 · Jan 19, 2026

dliverey44 said:
I have made comments about Nix and Caleb playing like ****, but then making big plays in crunch time and I said you can't get credit for putting out a fire you started by winning in the 4th QTR.

Last night completely changed my perspective. Maye as a whole did not play well, but he did come through in some very big spots and it made me realize that very good QBs make the plays when needed despite not playing their best. That is what Maye did last night.

So I apologize to Nix and Caleb, you guys are better than I thought you would be and I can now appreciate you not playing well but then showing up big at times.

Honestly we played in their hands with a conservative game plan. We played, mostly, afraid of their defense and tried to become a dink and dunk get to 3rd and short offense and it backfired creating 3rd and longs.
But when we let Maye be Maye we scored TDs
In most cases we reduced out passing game to dunk and dunk or throwing in obvious passing situations and made it easier for Houston’s defense

Real fan 02 · Jan 19, 2026

sb1 said:
It's a new era in NE. Hopefully that also means it's time to put that decades long Mile High jinx in the rear view mirror.

Exactly what I was saying.. this an opportunity to Avenge 2006, 2014, 2015 post season losses to Denver in Denver..

turkeyneck · Jan 19, 2026

sb1 said:
It's a new era in NE. Hopefully that also means it's time to put that decades long Mile High jinx in the rear view mirror.

"Squish the Fish" --> "Konk the Donk" ?

KCSVEN · Jan 19, 2026

Real fan 02 said:
I'd say Denver D is a notch above Seattle and probably right under Houston.. they like 60 something sacks this season I believe.. Seattle like the Legion of boom did gets a real home field advantage that helps them.. but i agree they can be had.. we saw this against Buffalo and other times during the season.. where we can have success is attacking Moss the CB opposite Surtain

I've looked at Football Reference, PFF, multiple stats. Seahawks defense comes out as #1 pretty much everywhere. Texans #2. That's pretty consistent. You can take that to the bank.

Denver slots in 3-6 depending on what stat you want.

I question Denver more than some others due to the very weak schedule. Bills almost 500 yards and all about the 5 turnovers so never punted. Outside TO's Bills moved ball at will

The Broncos have dominated bad QB's and other than Prescott have not been great vs good offenses/QB's.

-Week before Bills: Bye,
-Before that Trey Lance
-before that Chris Oladokan
-then Trevor Lawrence 115.4 rating.
-Packers had only 1 punt. Jordan Love 2 bad passes deep over the middle for picks. Moved the ball a ton
-Geno Smith
-Mariota goes for almost 300 yards
-Mahomes, bad year for him still almost had 300 yards, ghost of Kelce 9 catches.
-Geno Smith
-Davis Mills (a brief appearance by Stroud)
-Prescott, Finally they played a QB and played well against him. Late October the defense played well vs good QB.
-Dart 3 TD's passing and 1 running 93.4 rating 283 yards
-Justin Fields-Enough said
-Hurtz: He's not good but went for 280 and 2 TD's 100.8 rating
-Jake Browning
-Herbert 300 yards beat Denver 23-20
-Daniel Jones 316 yards 107.0 rating
-Cam Ward debut

DaBruinz · Jan 19, 2026

Lagaffe_07 said:
Drake has small hands. Nothing you can do about that. he will always have trouble holding on the ball.

What you hope is that he can develop a better sense of pressure otherwise those fumble coming from a rusher on his blindside will continue to happen. Brady was the king of that. It’s like he had eyes in the back of his head.

What he has to cleanup without compromise is his decision making in the pocket. 80% of his fumbles is him trying to do too much,

on the Patriots postgame show Mike Dussault said that Drake Maye had the most fumble in the NFL with 13 in the regular season. You add to that 6 fumbles in the postseason. That’s 19 fumbles in 19 games. That can’t continue

9 1/8" is small? Tom Brady has 9 3/8" hands. Those are not "small". Oh. Wait. You probably think they are small. I mean, Brady's 1st 3 years he has 12, 11, and 13 fumbles during the regular season. Brady had 12 fumbles in his 6th year.. Guess the Pats should have jettisoned him at that point, right?

Mike Dussault is incorrect. Maye did not have 13 fumbles in the Regular season. Maye had 8 fumbles during the regular season. It's very easy to look up.

The Kid is 23 years old. Everyone has acknowledged that Maye needs to do a better job with ball security. But let's stop pushing BS narratives of "small hand size" or 1 fumble per game when it's just not true.

bakes781 · Jan 19, 2026

Denver lead the league in single digit victories by a wide margin I believe? So the case could be made that they are "fool's gold"?

Rob0729 · Jan 19, 2026

Take away the fumbles, Maye actually had a pretty good game considering who he was going up against. He is the only QB this year to throw for three TDs against the Texans or had a passer rating over 100.

I blame two of the fumbles more on Campbell. Every QB has strip sacks where they are in the beginning of the throwing motion and the defender has a clean hit on the ball. Nothing can protect that. Sometimes the QB can avoid it with good pocket awareness, sometimes it isn't on the QB. But no matter how good a QB's hand strength and how big his hand size, those are going to be stripped. It is just a matter if the QB's arm is going forward or not.

Rob0729 · Jan 19, 2026

Mack Herron · Jan 19, 2026

Real fan 02 · Jan 19, 2026

KCSVEN said:
I've looked at Football Reference, PFF, multiple stats. Seahawks defense comes out as #1 pretty much everywhere. Texans #2. That's pretty consistent. You can take that to the bank.

Denver slots in 3-6 depending on what stat you want.

I question Denver more than some others due to the very weak schedule. Bills almost 500 yards and all about the 5 turnovers so never punted. Outside TO's Bills moved ball at will

The Broncos have dominated bad QB's and other than Prescott have not been great vs good offenses/QB's.

-Week before Bills: Bye,
-Before that Trey Lance
-before that Chris Oladokan
-then Trevor Lawrence 115.4 rating.
-Packers had only 1 punt. Jordan Love 2 bad passes deep over the middle for picks. Moved the ball a ton
-Geno Smith
-Mariota goes for almost 300 yards
-Mahomes, bad year for him still almost had 300 yards, ghost of Kelce 9 catches.
-Geno Smith
-Davis Mills (a brief appearance by Stroud)
-Prescott, Finally they played a QB and played well against him. Late October the defense played well vs good QB.
-Dart 3 TD's passing and 1 running 93.4 rating 283 yards
-Justin Fields-Enough said
-Hurtz: He's not good but went for 280 and 2 TD's 100.8 rating
-Jake Browning
-Herbert 300 yards beat Denver 23-20
-Daniel Jones 316 yards 107.0 rating
-Cam Ward debut

Thank you for this information... great post!! I guess I just get enamored with thier sack numbers and felt like they presented more challenges.. so based on that information they can be had?

Just like teams use against us.. I see right away where we can attack it's over the middle and against Riley moss in coverage.

On defense same as it's been last 2 games there isn't that much coaching that Payton can do in a week to make Stidham what he's not. He's a back up. We need to make him look like it and not allow him to develop any confidence in his throws.

I expect more of the same pressure Stidham and suffocate the run game. Gonzo takes away Sutton.

jimnance · Jan 19, 2026

Another one- dimensional team, just like Houston.
I wasn't worried about the Texans and I sure as hell ain't worried about the Donkeys
One- dimensional teams don't win SBs today.
I said before the playoffs began, there are 3 legit teams: Patriots,Rams and Seahawks.
The only 3 ranked top 10 in both offense and defense.
But the Patriots fuul- season defensive rankings are very misleading.
They're not a top 10 defense. They're a top 5 defense. Easily.
When fully healthy. Check out the defensive stats when Milton Williams plays.
The best #1 run defense in the nfl and a top 5 Defense overall.
Look at all 3 levels. Excellent at all 3.
People get swayed by edge rushers.
Great DTs are more important than great edge rushers. Houston was tough because they had 2 not just 1 plus great dbs.
Our secondary is just as good if not better.
Our lbs are better. Our interior DL is better.
Time to give this defense the respect it deserves. In addition to one of the top offenses in the NFL. And qb play matters.
So the Rams would be the toughest match up so but I don't see much difference between Rams and Patriots. If anything Patriots have played better than LA over the last 3 or 4 games which is more relevant than earlier in the season because they were missing key players. Not anymore. Take this team lightly at your own risk

Uptown · Jan 19, 2026

upstater1 · Jan 19, 2026

dliverey44 said:
I have made comments about Nix and Caleb playing like ****, but then making big plays in crunch time and I said you can't get credit for putting out a fire you started by winning in the 4th QTR.

Last night completely changed my perspective. Maye as a whole did not play well, but he did come through in some very big spots and it made me realize that very good QBs make the plays when needed despite not playing their best. That is what Maye did last night.

So I apologize to Nix and Caleb, you guys are better than I thought you would be and I can now appreciate you not playing well but then showing up big at times.

Maye made a lot of downfield pinpoint passes that were broken up either because of outstanding CB play, or PI not called, or our receiver coming up small.

Maye really did an outstanding job in the intermediate and long game. He was very poor getting the ball out to wide open people short (Henry 2x at least) and on 2 of his fumbles, poor in terms of his internal clock.

I have fewer problems with the 2 lost fumbles, because one occurred in 2 seconds, and the other was a broken play when he was running.

DaBruinz · Jan 19, 2026

PatsFanInVa said:
I was noticing the long arms and remembering the legendary pre-Texans practices back in the day when our defense had paddles to bat down the ball (funny about the long-arm fetish continuing. Guess those guys read Pats fans for defensive philosophy.)

It also reminds me of Daunte Culpepper's travails, the template for the small-handed QB. In the five seasons from 2000-2004 he had 5 or more fumbles per season, but then settled down. (It's in the rushing stats)

Daunte Culpepper Career Stats - NFL - ESPN

Complete career NFL stats for Detroit Lions Quarterback Daunte Culpepper on ESPN. Includes scoring, rushing, defensive and receiving stats.

www.espn.com

There's a lesson in there, in addition to the small-hands-equals-fumbles concern. When Daunte C ran the ball a lot, he fumbled a lot. How hard is that to process -- you run, you pay the price, including fumbles. How hard is it to guess that the fumble effect is greater if you have smaller hands? Is that 4 or 500 yards worth the 5-9 fumbles in a season? That's a situational question. But the point is, small hands alone is a fumble concern. But you can address the concern.

But I don't think that was it last night. We've all seen games in terrible weather where it didn't matter, well, apparently this is the kind of snow that matters, or it mattered last night, whatever -- the dreaded wintry mix, which we'd all prefer not to drive in, compared with a nice dry fluffy powder.

Daunte Culpepper had 9.5" hands. The claim was that they were small for his size of 6'3 3/4". The reality is that they aren't. They weren't Manning's 10 1/8 or Drew Brees 10 1/4", but 9.5" isn't small. Considering that they're bigger than Brady's.

People have forgotten the fumbling issues that Brady had for 4 of the first 6 years of his career. 12, 11, 13, 8, 4, 12. Did Brady have "small hands"? Or was Brady trying to do too much and not have the honed awareness that we remember.

I've seen multiple people blame Campbell for 2 of the fumbles in that Campbell allowed his man to get in easily.. It's very hard for a QB to protect the ball of a blind-side hit. when he's just getting set. Like others have said, Maye will learn... He is only 23.. in a few of the instances, he was trying to do too much like last week against the Chargers. But it's extremely hard to protect the ball against that blind-side hit. Regardless of hand-size or 6th sense or whatever.

dliverey44 · Jan 19, 2026

Ring 6 said:
Honestly we played in their hands with a conservative game plan. We played, mostly, afraid of their defense and tried to become a dink and dunk get to 3rd and short offense and it backfired creating 3rd and longs.
But when we let Maye be Maye we scored TDs
In most cases we reduced out passing game to dunk and dunk or throwing in obvious passing situations and made it easier for Houston’s defense

If you look at the entire season 3rd and long is not a new thing. This offense has aspects of dink and dunk along with pushing the ball down field, so to say we tried to become dink and dunk isn't really accurate. I do agree that McD was calling plays too conservative at times because he was afraid of the defense, the weather, and the OL.

Betterthanmost · Jan 19, 2026

It is interesting that when we make a QB look bad, it is not because of our defense but because the QB was terrible. I love it. Keep the chip there.

PlainOldEd · Jan 19, 2026

4thQComeback said:
I’d take Nix 100 times over maye.

DaBruinz · Jan 19, 2026

patfanken said:
I knew it would never happen, but BOY, I was hoping for a Patriot-Bears Super Bowl. I was at that 85 game and I have waited a LOOOONNNNG time for revenge. But alas, maybe next year.

I was looking at the other 3 games and thinking.. Man.. The only team the Pats haven't played in the SB are the 49ers..

The Ram - Twice.. The start and end of the dynasty
Seahawks - Can't forget the Malcom Butler Int..
Bears- The Bears dominant defense for the ages..

It would be freaky weird if it was the Rams again..

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