{"id":65576,"date":"2026-02-09T04:30:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T09:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patsfans.com\/patriots\/blog\/?p=65576"},"modified":"2026-02-09T02:45:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T07:45:56","slug":"morse-good-bad-and-ugly-as-patriots-cinderella-season-comes-to-a-crashing-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patsfans.com\/patriots\/blog\/2026\/02\/09\/morse-good-bad-and-ugly-as-patriots-cinderella-season-comes-to-a-crashing-end\/","title":{"rendered":"MORSE: Good, Bad, and Ugly as Patriots Cinderella Season Comes to a Crashing End"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The clock struck midnight, and Drake Maye and the Cinderella Patriots turned back into handmaidens and pumpkins.\u00a0 \u00a0Maye and the Offense could not handle the pressure from the Seahawks defense in the 29-13 Super Bowl loss.\u00a0 The Patriots had a great year and a bad Super Bowl.\u00a0 Both items can be true.\u00a0 I said before the game that the Seattle Defense was the real deal. \u00a0\u00a0Their Defense was better than the Patriots Defense.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>The Good<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The Defense kept the Patriots in the game in the first half, giving up just 3 Field Goals.<\/li>\n<li>Christian Gonzalez was outstanding in coverage with 3 PBUs. He held NFL Offensive Player of the Year Jaxon Smith-Njigba to 4 catches and only 27 yards, with only 1 catch for 4 yards in the 1st half.<\/li>\n<li>Craig Woodson had a very good game with 10 tackles and 2 Pass Breakups. He also got sucked up by play action on the AJ Barner TD. In the 1<sup>st<\/sup> half, he was the best player on Defense.<\/li>\n<li>The Defense held Seattle to 1 for 4 in the Red Zone. However, all 4 of those resulted in Field Goals.<\/li>\n<li>TD catches by Mack Hollins and Rhamondre Stevenson were great receptions.<\/li>\n<li>Pop Douglas had 5 Catches on 7 Targets<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>The Bad<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The Patriots couldn\u2019t prevent Kenneth Walker from running the wide stretch runs. He ran 27 times for 135 yards and a 5.0 average.\u00a0 The Patriots knew this was their bread and butter and they couldn\u2019t stop it.<\/li>\n<li>Sam Darnold was stopped several times in the backfield, and the Patriots&#8217; defenders couldn\u2019t tackle him. They missed at least 4 sacks.<\/li>\n<li>Drake Maye\u2019s 3 turnovers were a huge factor. The strip sack\/INT for a pick six broke the Patriots back.\u00a0 Maye\u2019s fumble gave Seattle their 1<sup>st<\/sup> TD on a short field.\u00a0 Maye looked like a 2<sup>nd<\/sup> year, inexperienced player.<\/li>\n<li>Maye was 27 of 43 (62.7%) for 295 yards, 2 TDs, 2 INTs, and a Fumble. He padded his stats late when the game was already decided.<\/li>\n<li>Maye was sacked 6 times, but a few of those were on Drake Maye. Seattle blitzed more often than they had all season.\u00a0 One was a double CB blitz.\u00a0 Neither Maye nor his receivers picked this up and made the hot read.\u00a0 Maye missed several blitzes.\u00a0 He also held onto the ball too long and was indecisive.\u00a0 That is something that comes with young, inexperienced QBs.<\/li>\n<li>Drake Maye confirmed that he took a pain injection for his shoulder before the game. Perhaps his injury is more serious than we were led to believe.<\/li>\n<li>What happened to the Jumbo formation? They only used Thayer Munford once, and they passed out of that formation.\u00a0 The Patriots abandoned the run.<\/li>\n<li>Drake Maye was the Patriots&#8217; leading rusher with 5 carries for 37 yards. However, the Patriots had 4.4 yards per carry, the same as the Seahawks.<\/li>\n<li>Stephon Diggs had just 3 Catches on 3 Targets.<\/li>\n<li>The Patriots&#8217; tackling against Seattle was pretty bad, letting Darnold get away and Walker get extra yards.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>The Ugly<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The Patriots started Will Campbell and Jared Wilson, two rookies on the blind side of the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> year QB. No team has ever started two rookies on the Offensive line in the Super Bowl. \u00a0\u00a0The Patriots were able to cover up their deficiencies all season, and they all rose to the surface in the Super Bowl.\u00a0 I had a bad feeling about Campbell coming out of camp because of the number of sacks he was giving up.\u00a0 That was a terrible game by Campbell.\u00a0 We have all off-season to talk about Campbell.\u00a0 Wilson wasn\u2019t much better.<\/li>\n<li>Next Gen Stats attributed 14 QB Pressures Allowed to Will Campbell in Super Bowl LX &#8211; the most pressures allowed by any player in a game this season (including playoffs).\u00a0 He reportedly left immediately and did not speak with the media after the game.<\/li>\n<li>Josh McDaniels playcalling was awful all night. Was he trying to compensate for Maye\u2019s shoulder issue?\u00a0 Maye was late or behind his targets.<\/li>\n<li>The lack of a call for a Personal Foul late hit by Seattle\u2019s Joshua Jobe on Stefon Diggs away from the play and after the whistle was egregious by the Officials. Jobe even threw a punch at Diggs, and there was no flag with an Official standing right there.\u00a0 I felt Seattle took advantage of this Officiating crew that was not throwing any flags.\u00a0 Part of the reason their stretch runs were working was that they were holding the Edge players, no calls.<\/li>\n<li>Drake Maye panicked and threw a prayer of a pass that was picked off. This was the worst game by Maye all year.<\/li>\n<li>Maye was the 1<sup>st<\/sup> QB to be sacked 5 times or more in 4 straight playoff games.<\/li>\n<li>Mike Vrabel not challenging the Cooper Kupp bobbled reception in the 1<sup>st<\/sup> Quarter was a bad decision. That \u201ccatch\u201d put the Seahawks in Field Goal position.<\/li>\n<li>The Patriots set a new record for Super Bowl losses with 6.<\/li>\n<li>This from Joe Haggerty on X: \u201cDrake Maye taking sacks while Diggs is waving at him because he&#8217;s so wide open. U-G-L-Y\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The clock struck midnight, and Drake Maye and the Cinderella Patriots turned back into handmaidens and pumpkins.\u00a0 \u00a0Maye and the Offense could not handle the pressure from the Seahawks defense in the 29-13 Super Bowl loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":65592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_pfeai_meta_description":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[23269,796,23466,162,256,44,70,24035,24304,23933,24076,8,24303,24209,24050,23926,24219,374,22756,1909,24117,23730],"class_list":["post-65576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-patriots-news","tag-christian-gonzalez","tag-defense","tag-drake-maye","tag-injuries","tag-josh-mcdaniels","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-defense","tag-nfl-offense","tag-offense","tag-offensive-line-play","tag-patriots","tag-playcalling","tag-quarterback","tag-quarterback-play","tag-rookies","tag-seahawks","tag-seattle-seahawks","tag-stephon-diggs","tag-super-bowl","tag-super-bowl-lx","tag-will-campbell"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v27.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>MORSE: Good, Bad, and Ugly as Patriots Cinderella Season Comes to a Crashing End<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The clock struck midnight, and Drake Maye and the Cinderella Patriots turned back into handmaidens and pumpkins.\u00a0 \u00a0Maye and the Offense could not handle the pressure from the Seahawks defense in the 29-13 Super Bowl loss.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patsfans.com\/patriots\/blog\/2026\/02\/09\/morse-good-bad-and-ugly-as-patriots-cinderella-season-comes-to-a-crashing-end\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MORSE: Good, Bad, and Ugly as Patriots 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