SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Garrett Bradbury tried to keep his emotions in check, but his tear ducts betrayed the resolve of a hardened pro who just saw his seventh and most successful season come to an end in the NFL’s biggest game.
“You can’t,” he said when I asked if he could put into words this remarkable journey. “You can’t.”
Bradbury wasn’t the only Patriot struggling with the finality of this season. Stefon Diggs went around a quiet locker room, sharing hugs with teammates, his eyes glassy. Will Campbell and Morgan Moses engaged in quiet conversation, with the sage veteran grasping the rookie’s arm and offering encouragement. And when Drake Maye emerged from his postgame press conference looking drained - heavy is the head that wears the crown - it was Campbell who brought a smile to his face.
There was something magical about what this team accomplished. What began as a fresh start and hope brought by a new regime grew into something far bigger as the year progressed. But the Seahawks had a magical season of their own, and that defense of theirs - number one or two in just about every meaningful category - did not care about Maye’s near MVP season, nor this team that came from the bottom and rose to the top of the AFC. No, what Seattle did was slowly, steadily, and systematically dismantle a Patriots offense that, for reasons we’re about to get into, had no answers.
“Things kind of happened fast,” Diggs told me. “We couldn't get things rolling. It's not on one person. Everybody played a part. So I was definitely surprised.”
After a week-plus of speculation and questions about his injured right shoulder, Maye admitted he had to take an injection in the area prior to the game. He went into no further detail on that front, telling reporters it had no impact on his performance. Witnessing what we did on Sunday night in Santa Clara, I won’t argue with him.
Maye was discombobulated almost from the jump. His feet were pitter-pattering and even some of his early completions - and there weren’t many - lacked the precision and accuracy that was one of the many calling cards of his elite regular season, but helped define his postseason.
After recording two first downs on their opening possession and another to begin the second, Maye and this offense didn’t get another first down until their second series of the third quarter. That’s no way to win a football game, even with a defense doing just about everything it could to keep the game close.
“There are plays in the first half where I feel like I could have made a better throw or made a better decision,” Maye said. “It really comes down to who makes the plays and who doesn’t, and they made the plays tonight.”
“We came up short today,” Kayshon Boutte said. “I would say that truthfully, you know, defense played their ass off, but the offense we went out there and didn’t do shit, for real.”
Pressure was a problem from the beginning, with Maye taking the first of his six sacks to derail a semi-promising drive. The Seahawks weren’t doing it by being overly aggressive - they blitzed just 26% of the time in the first half (Per Sumer Sports) - but when they did, those seemed to land far more than they didn’t. When the half was all said and done, Seattle had a pressure rate of nearly 47%. That’s not a number you can win with.
“They were blitzing a lot, doing a lot of movement with the front and blitzing a lot too, from the side, stuff like that,” Mike Onwenu said. “A couple of times it was just - we couldn't block it. They brought more than we could block. That’s football for you.
“I think they had good disguise too. A couple of times with the secondary - the secondary was playing way off, and they were still blitzing the corners and stuff like that. You don't see until it happens, and now you've got to play with that game speed.”
“We knew they had it,” Bradbury said, referencing some of the overload blitzes. “They pressured at a high clip in the first half, and they had a good plan. They're good defense. Certainly give them credit.”
Maye could have used some help from the running game, but that was a mostly fruitless endeavor. The Pats had zero explosive runs, and Rhamondre Stevenson and TreVeyon Henderson were hit in the backfield on 53.8% of their carries. Stevenson didn’t have any answers in the immediate aftermath of the game.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It just came down to execution. We needed to execute better.”
Mike Vrabel offered a little more insight.
“They stopped the run with some split safeties. Then they mix in pressure. They’re talented. They play hard. Those are things that usually make a good defense.”
As for a good offense, the Pats didn’t have one of those tonight. Maye had 48 yards passing at the half, and while the final numbers (27-of-43, 295 yards and 2 TDs) look respectable, there wasn’t enough down-to-down, series-to-series consistency to make this a real game. Plus, there were three more Maye turnovers, which led to 14 points, including directly, courtesy of a Uchenna Nwosu pick-six.
“I gotta make better throws when the game is like that,” Maye said. “I gotta make some throws to help us move the football.”
The 23-year-old didn’t do that. It certainly doesn’t all fall on him - the offensive line was porous - though Nwosu said after the game, “We know he’s their whole team. ... We knew if we affected him, their whole gameplan would be nothing.”
But when you are the quarterback of the losing team in a fairly one-sided Super Bowl, you have to absorb a fair share of criticism, and based on postgame reaction, Maye already is.
“I know he obviously feels like it was all on him, or, you know, whatever that happened during the game,” Onwenu noted. “But we're all in this together.”
“Drake’s the face of this franchise,” Bradbury said. “He's the leader of this team. He's a warrior. I think this whole locker knows that, so I'm proud as heck to be his teammate.”
"We can sit here and try to put it on one guy,” Vrabel added. “You'll be disappointed because that'll never happen.”
As for the man himself, Maye was asked what, if anything, he’d like back from this game. He responded, "What would I like to have back? I'd like to go back to the beginning and do it over."
He'll get that chance, but not until next season, when that 300+ day journey begins all over again.