Patriots have opportunity to start well vs. SEA
Mike Florio and Michael Holley discuss the New England Patriots facing the Seattle Seahawks in Week 1 of the 2026 NFL season and how the Patriots can get off to a strong start after the Super Bowl loss.
Video Transcript
Michael Holley, get ready.
I wanna prepare you for this because we will see the first evidence of it on Monday, and then there will be more evidence of it on Tuesday, and then there will be more evidence, and there will be much more evidence of it on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of next week.
Get ready.
Get ready.
The rash of social media posts from all 32 teams is coming.
You will be reminded by the social media account of every NFL franchise that there's only 100 days to go until the season begins.
And the insiders will do the same thing.
I guarantee you, Monday morning, 5:00 AM, that's my guess, put it on the, the office pool, on the bingo card, 5:00 AM Eastern on Monday, Adam Schefter will tweet that it is 100 days until the first game of the season.
And it's one of my pet peeves because, and I'll say this every year for as long as I'm doing this, until they throw me off the air once and for all, and even then I'll still find a way to make this point.
Folks- enjoy your summers.
Don't, don't wish the next 100 days away.
Football is gonna be here.
Enjoy June.
Enjoy July.
Enjoy August.
Spend time with your families.
Go on a vacation.
Ride a bike.
Read a book.
I got, I got a few you could choose from.
But let's not do this, "Oh, oh, can't wait till football starts."
No, you can wait, and you will wait, and, and you're gonna live 100 days between now and then, 100 days you're never gonna get back.
So that's the end of my rant.
I will do it every year.
I hate, if you couldn't tell, the 100 days until football.
Who cares?
It'll We know when the first game is.
It's Wednesday night, September 9 from Seattle.
I'll be there.
We all know it.
We don't need to have a countdown for it.
And I checked the screen just now to make sure they didn't throw together a countdown clock for T- Let's It's not like Christmas.
It's not Christmas.
Right.
Enjoy your summer.
The 100 days, the 100 days of football before September 9th, a Wednesday night in Seattle.
have you ever been to Seattle before, by the way, Mike?
Yes.
I have been there- Okay once for the season opening game, Packers-Seahawks 2014, one of my rare flights before And that was right, that was the flight, the flight home from Seattle.
I was sitting next to Paul Hicks, the former NFL chief PR executive.
We were having a conversation and while we were talking, I noticed the plane was off the ground, and that was when the thing in my brain that kept me from flying went away, and I thought, "Why do I worry about this?"
And I've been flying ever since.
Yeah.
You gotta go out to Seattle.
You gotta, you gotta have a nice flight out.
You'll see, the stadium.
You'll see the Hendrix, the Hendrix statue there in town.
I don't know if you saw it the first time you went there.
It's a great sight.
and you'll see a game that pri- we all hope does not resemble the game we saw, in February because, that thing was a mess.
And, I, I hope, I hope the Patriots have done enough since then to make it a lot more competitive than it was.
That was a, that was a non-competitive football game in San Francisco, despite what the final score says.
And that's what made it an interesting choice for the first game of the season.
Only the third time that there's a Super Bowl rematch in week one of the season after the Super Bowl game.
The first time was after Super Bowl IV between the Vikings and the Chiefs.
They met week one of the newly merged AFL-NFL.
And then it happened 10 years ago when the Broncos and Panthers got together in Denver week one after the Broncos had beaten Carolina, and it came down to a Graham Gano missed field goal, or the Panthers would've won that game to start the 2016 season.
So, the NFL thought this is a great thing to do.
People will look at it and say, "Is it really the best way to start the season?"
I've come around on that point, not just because my paycheck relies upon it.
Drake May's paycheck relies upon playing well.
Here's Drake May from earlier this week talking about the prospect of a little hair of the dog that bit them soundly in Super Bowl 60.
It's a chance for us to, you know, get some extra motivation during training camp, you know, with the, the starting off with a bang, you know, like that.
You know, a chance to get a opponent that, you know, left a bad taste in our mouth.
So I think it's, you know, something for us that's gonna, you know, really make us work.
You know, we gotta, you know, bring our week one, you know, on the road in a tough environment, you know, with their, you know, they're gonna be hanging their banner and, and that's a part of it.
So I think it's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting, it's gonna be fun, it's gonna be a tough task.
So it'll be something for us to get some extra motivation and, and make training camp better.
You know, the human mind is equipped to come up with a glass half full take on any circumstance, no matter how bad it may be.
I think the Patriots look at this and say, "Good.
We gotta go there anyway.
We gotta play at Seattle at some point this year.
So we get our week one game on a Thursday.
We get a mini bye before our week two game against the Steelers.
That's good.
That's good.
Otherwise, it would've been Sunday to Sunday, or maybe Monday to Sunday, like the Broncos and the Chiefs are gonna experience right out of the gates.
We get extra time to recover from the game, we have to go there anyway, and they got a new offensive coordinator, and they got a new running back."
We don't know how they're gonna-Manage offensively.
Kenneth Walker III's gone.
And the Patriots, they've added Romeo Doubs.
I would be very surprised if they don't add AJ Brown in the coming days.
We're gonna talk about that a little bit later in the program.
Soon.
Yeah.
So- Yep and, and Drake May's, Drake May's healthy.
Look, I, I, I know that that Seahawk's defense was probably going to overwhelm the New England offense either way, but Drake May's shoulder was messed up.
They hit it.
Chris said before the game he was watching May warm up, and he could tell that, that something was off.
He'd gotten a shot.
Like, you don't wanna numb your shoulder when you're trying to throw a football.
Like, that, that shoulder was messed up.
So there, there are reasonable factors you can point to, and you can say from the Patriot's perspective, and also you everybody's gonna expect them to lose.
Like, what, what, what defending conference champion goes into week one with the ability to say, "Nobody thinks we're gonna win"?
So there's a lot of reasons- Yeah why the Patriots- Right can look at this and say, "Hey, you know, this is a pretty good, this is a pretty good draw for, for our first game of the season."
You have your prediction for the, the countdown 100 days until football, 5:00 AM, right?
5:00 AM on Monday.
So my prediction after, the, the, the night of that one, that 100th night, that Wednesday, September 9th, so late in the night, maybe early, maybe 101 early into the next morning, that Thursday morning, there's gonna be this grand overreaction to the result of the game.
So if Se- if Seattle wins, it'll be Seattle's about, "Hey, we're gonna do our power rankings right now, even though nobody else has played, just these two, and Seattle is the number one team in football.
Look, they're z- they're, they're right back, they, they're right back where they left off in the Super Bowl.
They're the best team in football."
But if the Patriots go in and win, then they'll get in the number one spot in the power rankings.
"Look, they figured it out.
they're better than Seattle.
They went in there and won that game."
I think for Drake May, it's not really about motivation, though, with all respect.
He said, you know, "We're motivated."
Yeah, it's g- I'm glad you're motivated.
You probably were motivated before Super Bowl 60 to win the game, but motivation wasn't the issue.
Your personnel was the issue.
And New England told you everything you need to know about the problem in Super Bowl 60.
Because the first thing they did, they pretty much blew up their offensive line, essentially.
You know, Will Campbell is still there as the left tackle for now, but Jarrett Wilson was the left guard.
The left guard is no longer, 'cause he moved over to center, where Garrett Bradbury was.
Garrett Bradbury is gone.
A new left guard, maybe Vera Tucker from the Jets, even though he's had some injury concerns.
And they're still not done, because they spent their They moved up in the first round, and they drafted a left tackle.
I know they played my right tackle yesterday, Mike.
Here's my bet.
I'm just gonna throw it out there.
I think by week six or week seven, Caleb Lobu will be the starting left tackle for the New England Patriots.
That's just my guess.
I think he's gonna be, I think he's gonna be a tackle, a left tackle, and I think, Will Campbell will be, maybe a, a, a left guard, and maybe they replace, Michael Winnew who's on the right side.
He's got a big contract number.
Replace Mike Winnew with, Vera Tucker.
So Vera Tucker is one guard.
Will Campbell is the other guard.
That's my prediction.
But they, but it's clear based on- Well- what Seattle did to them in the Super Bowl, they knew that, "We gotta do something about our offensive line, because we just can't stop 'em."
They, they over They were so overwhelmed, the stats don't even begin And the stats are, are dire.
They were nasty stats of what, what the, Seahawks did to the Patriots.
But that still doesn't tell the story.
It was worse than what the stat- what the statistics say.
Oh, 29 to 13, it was far worse than the score.
It felt like if they had played that game 10 times, the Patriots would have won zero.
That's why I think people look at that game and say, "Is this really how we wanna start it off?"
But man, hey, it won't surprise me if the Patriots win that game.
All these different factors we're talking about, maybe catch the Seahawks flat-footed.
Seahawks say, "We just beat the hell out of this team."
Isn't that the worst team to play, a team that you just beat the hell out of, and you think all you have to do is show up, and we're gonna That's 1-0.
Yeah.
Oh, what do you think the Seahawks thought when they saw they're playing the Patriots right away?
"Good.
Let's do it.
Let's kick their ass again.
Let's do it.
Yeah, we'll do it.
It was easy last time.
It'll be easy this time."
And there's an argument to be made that maybe it won't be so easy, and the Patriots will be better, and the Seahawks won't be as good.
It's a major change.
When you have a defensive head coach and your offensive coordinator has taken a head coaching job, that is a major change.
Look at what happened in Detroit last year.
They lost 27 to 13, I believe, to start the season at Green Bay, going from Ben Johnson to John Morton.
So we're not just saying all that to sell the game.
We're saying it because we believe it.
Because when we first saw, when it was whittled down to four possibilities, Patriots, Bears, Cardinals, Chargers, please, please, not the Patriots.
Please, not a Super Bowl rematch.
And now that it's there, it's like, yeah, you know what?
We get the Bears-Seahawks later in the season.
So that's the thing.
All these games are gonna happen at some point.
They could put anything on at first night of the season.
They could've done Cardinals-Seahawks, and it would still do 30 million.
Wouldn't it?
Cardinals-Seahawks had a great Prime Time game- Yeah, it would last year on a Thursday night- Yeah that went to overtime.
Yeah.
It, it would do a, it would do a- No huge number, but if you get that announcement, everybody would say, "Really?
That's what you're gonna come up with for your, for your opening night game, Cardinals-Seahawks?"
I mean, Patriots-Seahawks is, on, on paper it looks like a pretty good matchup if you just kind of forget about what you saw in Santa Clara in February.
And, and as you said, Mike, really, they every team is not, it's not the same team.
It's not gonna be the same Patriots team that comes out there.
It's not gonna be the same Seahawks team.
So with the, with some people, arriving and some people leaving, it might be a lot more competitive than what we saw in February.
Well, it's coming.
And as of Monday, we will all be reminded by the Patriots social media account, by the Seahawks social media account, by Shefty at 5:00 AM Eastern, 100 days until the season begins.
