{"id":741724,"date":"2026-02-10T03:45:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/741724\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T03:45:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:45:25","slug":"how-seahawks-defense-disrupted-drake-maye-and-patriots-in-super-bowl-60-nbc-sports-boston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/741724\/","title":{"rendered":"How Seahawks\u2019 defense disrupted Drake Maye and Patriots in Super Bowl 60 \u2013 NBC Sports Boston"},"content":{"rendered":"

The nice thing? Nobody needs a football PhD to understand why the Patriots got cuffed around in Super Bowl 60<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Drake Maye got bopped around too much. That made him jumpy. And Josh McDaniels didn\u2019t pivot to any viable answer to stop the bopping around.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s harder to figure out why those things happened.<\/p>\n

Why, after a season of competency, did rookie left tackle Will Campbell allow 14 pressures<\/a>? Bad matchup? Nerves? Not strong enough above the waist? Is his MCL, which caused him to miss four games, still an issue? Are his arms too short? Is he unsuited to play left tackle in the NFL?<\/p>\n

The same general questions can be applied to left guard Jared Wilson. Sunday was the first time two rookie linemen started together in a Super Bowl. And after a season of watching those two and saying, \u201cHey \u2026 not bad\u2026!\u201d the worst-case scenario played out in front of the football-watching world.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Maye got bopped around in other games. He still reined it back in after mistakes or made sensational throws despite the pressure (the playoff win over Houston<\/a> being a prime example). That he wasn’t able to regain poise this time (or escape with his feet, which he so often has) leads me to believe it was nerves and jumpiness. Was it the moment? Was it the heat he was under? It wasn\u2019t his shoulder. <\/p>\n

The Seahawks performed a poise-ectomy on him. So, what\u2019s that mean? Was this a one-shot deal and Maye shakes it off? Or \u2026 BLUEPRINT?!?!?!?<\/p>\n

And do you see what he has on his back? A tiny little monkey.<\/p>\n

Finally, with Campbell getting pushed around like a shopping cart, why didn\u2019t McDaniels pivot faster? My suspicion — based on Mike Vrabel\u2019s rallying sideline actions and halftime comments saying the team just needed to settle down — is that they believed the problem was more nerves-related than a lack of talent or strength on Campbell\u2019s part.<\/p>\n

They were stuck between, “Hey, we know how to do this … just settle in and do it.” And, “S—, we can’t do this. We have to change.”<\/p>\n

And I ONE MILLION PERCENT understand that quandary. If you’ve seen a particular level of competency for 23 games from your guys, you expect it will resurface. Just because you’re having negative plays early, you don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater after two weeks of preparing. <\/p>\n

Change too soon and it doesn\u2019t work? THAT would be panic.<\/p>\n

The fact Seattle wasn\u2019t running away with the game may have given the Patriots a false sense that they had time to work it out. There was no figuring it out. The Seahawks had a better game plan and better players. Better. Stronger. Faster. They had a real Steve Austin\u00a0problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Seahawks corner Devon Witherspoon was a major part of the destructiveness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew what was going on,\u201d Witherspoon\u00a0told SiriusXM NFL Radio<\/a>. \u201cWe had a good tell on what they like to do and how they like to play and how they were going to attack us. Coach put us in the best position to win. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a tell on their guards and their tackles, how they like to set, they\u2019re going to overset on certain rushes, they\u2019re going to fall for certain moves any time a group of guys get after them, and today I think we did that,\u201d Witherspoon said.<\/p>\n

I should say SO!!<\/p>\n

I would have REALLY liked to see a moving pocket for Maye (as many mentioned), but the one time he did that, he got tracked down. He also didn\u2019t show the same pocket escapability he normally does. If the Patriots were going to pound the middle of the line, maybe more Rhamondre Stevenson and less TreVeyon Henderson?<\/p>\n

Regardless, they were cartoonishly ineffective. ACME anvils falling on every drive.\u00a0A quick recap:<\/p>\n

First drive<\/p>\n

Two first downs. First-and-10 at the Seattle 45-yard line. SACK! Second-and-20.<\/p>\n

Second drive<\/p>\n

Maye to Kayshon Boutte for 21 yards.<\/p>\n

Two negative run plays with Henderson.<\/p>\n

SACK! On third-and-15 from the Seattle 48.<\/p>\n

Fourth drive<\/p>\n

Second play of the drive SACKED! on second-and-7.<\/p>\n

Fifth drive<\/p>\n

Started at their own 2. One first down. Then a third-and-7 FALSE START! on Poor Will Campbell.<\/p>\n

Sixth drive<\/p>\n

(First of the second half)<\/p>\n

Henderson for 9. Henderson for 0. Incompletion. Punt.<\/p>\n

Seventh drive<\/p>\n

First-and-10 at the 18. SACKED for a loss of 2.<\/p>\n

Eighth drive<\/p>\n

Strip-sack fumble on third-and-6 at the Patriots 44.<\/p>\n

Need I go on? I need not.<\/p>\n

Both teams came in with similar game plans: Harass the ever-loving crap out of the quarterback and see if he cracks.\u00a0The Patriots buzzed Sam Darnold’s tower all night, but never made the play that unnerved him. I think he was lucky and OK (rather than lucky and good).\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the other side, the Seahawks got home because they exposed the heretofore never-seen combo of left tackle\/left guard rookie starters in a Super Bowl.<\/p>\n

Naively, I came to believe the Patriots would overcome all their youth because they kind of had done it all year. But they all played young.<\/p>\n

The Patriots will rue this game — not because they lost it, but more because they never even gave themselves a chance to find out if they could have won it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nice thing? Nobody needs a football PhD to understand why the Patriots got cuffed around in Super…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[7,1178,1167,249,2326,2094,6,208,261,18699,351],"class_list":["post-741724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-england-patriots","tag-football","tag-jared-wilson","tag-new-england","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-newengland","tag-newenglandpatriots","tag-nfl","tag-patriots","tag-seattle-seahawks","tag-tom-e-curran","tag-will-campbell"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116044283359402232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741724","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=741724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}