The Patriots Are Speedrunning Their Rebuild
After bottoming out post-Brady, New England has stormed back into contention faster than nearly any past Super Bowl champion.
If the New England Patriots aren’t fully “back” yet, well, it’s sure starting to feel like they are. After beating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 28-23 on the road Sunday, the Pats have now won seven straight games — bringing their record on the season to 8-2, tied for tops in the league. And at Polymarket on Sunday afternoon, QB Drake Maye had moved ahead of the resurgent Patrick Mahomes and an inconsistent Josh Allen to take the lead as MVP favorite in this odd NFL season:
It’s all symbolic of a relatively quick return to relevance for a franchise that was the team of both the 2000s and 2010s by total wins,1 but one which had a 33-51 record from 2020 through 2024 — and went into the 2025 season outside the Top 20 in Super Bowl odds, while breaking in a new coach in Mike Vrabel.
Typically, when a team falls off after a stretch of championship-winning success, it takes a while to rebuild back to a competitive level. The Patriots seemed to buck that trend in a significant way in 2021, when — after Tom Brady left for Tampa Bay and the team sputtered through a rough offensive season with Cam Newton running the show in 2020 — rookie Mac Jones took over and led New England back to the playoffs (where they were blasted by the Bills, 47-17, but still).
However, Jones regressed over the next few seasons, Bill Belichick couldn’t decide on a starting QB, the defense collapsed under his replacement Jerod Mayo, and the team went 8-26 in 2023 and 2024 combined. Even after drafting Maye third overall in the ‘24 draft and replacing Mayo with another ex-Pats LB who had more experience as a winning coach — Vrabel — it was fair to think the journey back to contention would still be a slow one in Foxboro.
After all, you have to pay your dues with years of losing to regroup after so many decades of dominating… right? But like an empire that won’t stay gone for long, the Pats are already in the process of speed-running that process.
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