At the end of every season, for every team there are questions. Some are deeper and more concerning than others.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The end of the 2025 NFL season arrived Sunday night with Super Bowl 2026 inside Levi\u2019s Stadium, where the Seahawks dismantled the Patriots 29-13<\/a> in a game that wasn\u2019t nearly as close as the final score suggested<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of the game, two things ring true:<\/p>\n The Seahawks cemented themselves as the team to beat in 2026, with a defense that is second to none in the NFL and poised to get even better.<\/p>\n \u200aAnd, the domination of the Patriots raised doubt about how good New England really is despite winning 17 games this season, beginning with second-year quarterback Drake Maye, who looked lost not only Sunday but for much of the postseason as he struggled.<\/p>\n The Seahawks victory was so convincing that it left you wondering if the Patriots might be in danger of being a one-hit wonder this season, the same way the Bengals turned out to be after getting to the Super Bowl five years ago and essentially descended into mediocrity since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the end of every season, for every team there are questions. Some are deeper and more concerning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[833,7,838,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208,9,2833,3248,505,41484],"class_list":{"0":"post-741651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-drake-maye","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-mike-vrabel","11":"tag-new-england","12":"tag-new-england-patriots","13":"tag-newengland","14":"tag-newenglandpatriots","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-patriots","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-sports-columnists","19":"tag-sports-plus","20":"tag-super-bowl","21":"tag-super-bowl-2026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116044066474698918","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}