Looking at Sunday night’s showdown against the Chargers, the Patriots head into the postseason quietly having done one key thing that often decides how far a team goes in the playoffs.
They’re playing good football, and they’ve been improving week-to-week during the path that got them to this point.
The win on the road in Baltimore back in Week 16 was probably one of the more impressive feats, especially given how depleted they’ve been on defense. Having been without linebacker Robert Spillane and Milton Williams for the majority of the final weeks of the season, they struggled stopping the run but got enough support on the offensive side of the ball to walk out of there with a 28-24 win over the Ravens.
They then followed that up with back-to-back blowout wins over the Jets and Dolphins. People can talk all they want about the fact that those were two inferior teams, but one important point that gets lost is that good teams are supposed to beat up on bad teams.
And that’s exactly what they are right now, and they’ve been on an upward trajectory over the final month of the season.
Offensively, they’ve been terrific. Overall, they were #3 in points scored in the NFL going back to Week 13 with 172 points, trailing the Rams (212) and Jaguars (207), but finishing ahead of the Bills (172), Bengals (166), and Texans (161). The 139 points they scored over the final four games was also tied for the 2nd most in the NFL with the Rams behind Jacksonville (146), and ahead of San Francisco (130).
Patriots quarterback Drake Maye has obviously been the catalyst behind that run. The second-year quarterback has certainly been outstanding, and since Week 13, he’s been on fire. Over that span, he completed 102-of-137 (74.5%) for 1264 yards along with 10 touchdowns and just two interceptions.
Whether or not he wins the MVP remains a question mark, but for now, he’s focused on bigger things, like getting ready for a postseason run. He said this week that he’s looking forward to his first NFL playoff game, which fortunately will be played at Gillette Stadium in front of the home crowd.
“Yeah, there’s obviously a little bit of mixed emotions. I think the biggest thing is excited,” said Maye on Wednesday about how he’s feeling. “Excited to get an opportunity to play home playoff games. That’s what we kind of started at the beginning of the season of things we want to do here and goals we want to accomplish.”
“We got our chance and opportunity right here. So take advantage of playing in front of a crowd that’s been great all year, a crowd that I expect to be loud, and a night game against an opponent that has had some playoff experience and has a great offense and a great defense. So, we got our hands full, but looking forward to playing in front of this crowd.”
On the other side of the football, they certainly exceeded expectations, especially given all the injuries. Over the final three games, they allowed a combined total of 44 points, tied with the Jaguars for fourth-fewest in the NFL. Jacksonville is another team that has been on the rise in recent weeks, with the Jaguars set to host the Bills on Sunday at 1:00pm.
For New England, this 2025 season has never been flashy. Even with the blowouts they’ve put together this season, it’s been a run where they still left plenty on the table. They’ve simply been a slow-and-steady team throughout much of the season, never getting too high or too low at any point during the year.
What’s crazy is that, looking back, it’s safe to say that each performance hasn’t necessarily been great, but simply solid and consistent. That’s about all head coach Mike Vrabel could hope for, and he said on Wednesday that while there’s a lot at stake this weekend, the goal is to have his players continue the same approach that’s gotten them to this point against the Chargers.
“We need to embrace the preparation, and I want them to continue to enjoy the execution and everything that goes on with this,” said Vrabel. “I’m excited. I’m excited for these guys to prepare. I’m excited to coach them. So I hope that we’re locked in every week, and I’m imagining we’ll get everything we can out of them.”
For a team that still hasn’t reached its ceiling, it’s hard not to like New England’s chances this weekend. A return from Spillane this week appears to be a possibility, with Williams hopefully taking a step forward after his time on the field on Sunday against Miami. That will be key because the Chargers are in the top half of the league in rushing, averaging 121.6 yards per game, and also #2 in time of possession behind Buffalo.
Keeping the ball out of Maye’s hands will likely be their goal, which is why getting them off the field will need to be a priority.
“They do a nice job,” said Vrabel when asked about Los Angeles’ success holding the football. “They don’t mind being in third and three and running it to stay on track because they’re really good on third down. A quarterback [in Justin Herbert] that can scramble for a first down, that can run it, they can multiple different route concepts in those down and distances. So, probably the more that they possess it, obviously, the less that we get it. But I also think it’s a mentality where they’re trying to wear you down and win the game in the fourth quarter and put their five-minute offense out there and run it to win it.”
It should definitely be a good match-up, especially since the two head into this game on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how they finished their respective seasons. Los Angeles is a team that lost its final two games compared to one that has won its last three. The Chargers are also hoping that starter Justin Herbert’s ailing hand is better than it’s been after undergoing surgery back on December 1st.
Herbert said on Wednesday that missing the finale in Denver has helped.
“It continues to get better,” he told reporters. “Getting all the swelling out, getting better mobility of it, better strength, getting back to the way it was before.”
Hopefully, the Patriots can do a little better job against him than they did a year ago. They suffered a brutal 40-7 loss in Week 17 of the 2024 season at Gillette Stadium, which many believe was the final straw for then-head coach Jerod Mayo. In that game, Herbert was 26-of-38 (68.4%) for 281 yards and 3 touchdowns in the win.
Herbert admitted that this is a different team than he faced a year ago.
“They’re not the same team they were last year,” said Herbert. “It was late in the year last year, so you could watch it, but it’s not entirely the same. They’re playing different football now. So you turn on the tape, and you see a completely different team.”
And one year later, it’s a team that Patriots fans should be excited to watch compared to the one we saw limp into last offseason.
This time around, it’s a Patriots team that heads into the playoffs exactly as most Patriots fans would want them to, playing well and continuing to get better at the right time.
This time of year, it’s all about playing good football when it matters most. The hope now is that the Patriots can continue doing just that when they take the field on Sunday Night.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
