SANTA CLARA, Calif. — At one point early in Super Bowl LX, you could easily read Mike Vrabel’s lips: “Calm down,” he said, over and over, addressing his rattled offense.

They were struggling in pass protection, although that wasn’t really anything new. Drake Maye had been sacked 47 times in the regular season and five times in each of the New England Patriots’ previous three playoff games. This was more than that. This was a suffocation, a parade of blitzes using Devon Witherspoon from a Seattle Seahawks team that hadn’t heavily relied on the blitz all season, a pummeling that undid Maye, sending the MVP runner-up into a tailspin that he hadn’t before suffered, at the hands of an all-time defensive performance in the Super Bowl.

The Patriots never did calm down.

And when the dam eventually broke, when Maye was sacked for the fifth time and fumbled, it led to the touchdown that all but put the game out of reach early in the fourth quarter. The final score was 29-13, but it felt much more lopsided than that, like every drive for the Patriots might as well have been 300 yards long. Their first five drives ended in punts. Their sixth ended at halftime.

Then three more punts and a fumble before, finally, a touchdown. Which was followed by two straight interceptions.

Maye looked so perplexed by what he was seeing that he held the ball too long, and threw it errantly. He hadn’t played like that all season. Maye, who entered the game dealing with a right shoulder injury — one that called for a pain-killing shot prior to game time — finished 27-of-43 passing for 295 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions, but he had only 48 passing yards in the first half, meaning most of Maye’s statistical production came with the Patriots trailing by double digits. Neither Maye nor his Seattle counterpart Sam Darnold played well — the Patriots defense harassed Darnold, too. The difference is that Darnold managed to avoid disaster — no more seeing ghosts there — or hand the ball to Kenneth Walker III just enough to give the Seahawks a lead. It was, for the Patriots, one of the worst offensive performances we’ve ever seen in a Super Bowl.

“I’d like to go back to the beginning and redo it,” said Maye, who held back tears as he spoke to reporters.