NFL Fallout Week 3: The Patriots Are Battling More Than A Super Bowl Hangover

No one was comparing Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye to Bill Belichick and Tom Brady just yet — not even after the New England Patriots HC-QB duo went to the Super Bowl in their first year together. But Pats fans were feeling pretty good about their future. The franchise seemed set for a sustained run of success.

It turns out that last year, when Vrabel was the Coach of the Year and Maye was nearly the league MVP, were the good old days — already gone, and maybe soon to be forgotten. Because as good as last year was, that’s how bad this year has been.

And the way Maye and the 1-2 Patriots are going, their Super Bowl hangover might linger through the fall.

Yes, it's almost time to write off the 2026 Patriots, who suffered a humiliating 35-6 loss in Jacksonville on Sunday. Maye, in particular, has been awful this season. He was just 14 of 25 for 199 yards and two interceptions against the Jaguars. Those are basically his season averages through three games, as he's passed for less than 600 yards and thrown just one touchdown pass with six interceptions.

That puts him among the worst quarterbacks in football, one year after he was easily one of the best. And he’s not alone in his ineptitude. Vrabel appears to have no answers for a team with no running game, no pass rush, no consistency, no spark.

Maybe the world should have seen this coming. When Vrabel should’ve been focused on the NFL draft and laying the groundwork for another Super Bowl run, he was embroiled in personal scandal with NFL insider Dianna Russini this offseason, which included a marriage counseling retreat. That was a bad way to prepare for a season in which his Pats were already facing a big jump in strength of schedule.

Drake Maye has looked nothing like the MVP runner-up from last season — and his Patriots' Super Bowl run is starting to feel fluky. (Photo by Logan Bowles/Getty Images)

Still, they should have been good enough to at least not embarrass themselves in the face of stiffer competition. But what they really couldn’t have seen coming was Maye's regression. The third-year pro looks lost at times on the field. He’s made some incredibly bad decisions. Both his interceptions against the Jaguars were to well-covered receivers who didn't have much of a chance to make the catch. That included one in the end zone where Maye threw on the run, off his back foot and right into the defender’s hands.

A year ago, when Maye threw 31 touchdown passes and just eight interceptions, he made few decisions like these. He played with poise and remained accurate, even when his offensive line had him under duress.

But through three games this year, he’s just been alarmingly ineffective. And he’s getting no help from an anemic rushing attack. On Sunday, New England's defense couldn't get off the field on third downs and was worn down by its own offense repeatedly putting it back on the field. That all falls on Vrabel and his coaching staff. They’d surely argue that his distraction-filled offseason had nothing to do with the Pats' current problems, but with each stumble, that gets harder to believe.

Coming out of the Super Bowl, albeit a lopsided loss to the Seahawks, I believed they were just getting started on a long run of contention. It feels premature to suggest their title window could already be closing, but it might be too late for them to reverse course in 2026.

Their Waterloo may come this Sunday in Buffalo — a last chance to stop the Bills from turning the AFC East race into a rout. Because after that, even while playing in a division with the Dolphins and the Jets, the Patriots’ schedule is too unforgiving to assume they'll fix their myriad issues on the field enough to even be in the wild-card hunt.

And that’s shocking, really, because a mere eight months ago there were legitimate reasons to believe that New England was perhaps building another dynasty. The calendar still says September, and the Pats already look like last year's AFC title was a fluke.

After three straight years of seemingly knocking on the door of Super Bowl contention, that door has now slammed shut in the face of the Houston Texans. And soon they’re going to have to grapple with a very difficult problem concerning their quarterback:

C.J. Stroud isn't good enough to lead them to a title.

Right now, this era in Texans football is going to be remembered as a waste. Never mind that they had three trips to the playoffs and three playoff wins in the past three seasons. The bigger picture is they had the best defense in football last season, and maybe the best in the league since DeMeco Ryans became the coach in 2023.

And somehow it just wasn’t enough.

The Texans were one of the best stories in the league in recent seasons but now might be at a crossroads with young QB C.J. Stroud. (Photo by Johnnie Izquierdo/Getty Images)

Stroud, who was sensational as a rookie in 2023, has been average, at best, ever since. On Sunday, he became a game manager against a Colts defense that had given up a ridiculous 1,029 yards through its first two games. He was just 16 for 27 for 167 yards and a touchdown in the Texans' 19-17 loss. He’s thrown just three touchdown passes this season.

The Texans started 0-3 last year, too, but their defense was good enough to drag them to the playoffs. This year’s defense is still good, but hasn’t quite shown the same level of dominance. That means that to pull out of this tailspin, the Texans will need to see the dynamic version of Stroud that has been missing the past two-plus years.

Absent that, they’ll head into the offseason wondering if they made a mistake even picking up his fifth-year option, which will pay him $25.9 million in 2027. Given his talent and potential, it was probably worth the relatively low price. But it’s going to be hard to argue Stroud is worth a lucrative, long-term commitment when contract talks resume after the season. It wouldn't surprise me if the front office was already studying what might be a loaded quarterback draft class.

The quarterback situation in Minnesota is bordering on miserable. Kyler Murray, in his first game back from a concussion Sunday, looked like a shell of his former self. Carson Wentz was barely serviceable, not even reaching 300 total yards in Murray’s near-two-game absence. And J.J. McCarthy, the 10th overall pick in 2024, can’t get on the field.

So, how are the Vikings 3-0?

It’s a combination of some impressive defensive play (and scheming by Vikings DC Brian Flores) and O’Connell coaxing just enough offense out of his underwhelming unit. On Sunday, they beat the reeling Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23-16 despite just 168 passing yards from Murray, 78 team rushing yards, and just two catches from top receiver Justin Jefferson before he left with an ankle injury. 

Minnesota pulled off another improbable win by generating six sacks and constant pressure, plus a pair of interceptions inside the final 100 seconds to officially end the game.

Such success is probably unsustainable if the Vikings can’t get more out of their offense. But the way Flores’ defense is playing, they might not need much. If O’Connell can turn Murray into anything close to what he was in Arizona, maybe work some of the magic he conjured up with Sam Darnold two years ago, this becomes a dangerous team.

Right now, the Vikings are probably a notch below the three contenders in the NFC West, and maybe even the Philadelphia Eagles. But don’t count out O’Connell, who might be the early front-runner for NFL Coach of the Year and has gotten the most out of middling QBs in the past.

The Cleveland Browns were supposed to be one of the worst teams in football, especially after trading away All-Pro defensive end Myles Garrett. And Deshaun Watson was universally considered a well-deserved disaster waiting to happen at quarterback.

But it turns out, maybe Todd Monken wasn’t completely delusional with the confidence he showed heading into his first NFL head coaching job. Because after their 21-18 win over the Panthers on Sunday, the Browns are 2-1, and it would be foolish to dismiss them as a punchline anymore.

They still have issues, particularly at quarterback. Watson wasn’t good at all for the first three quarters against Carolina (10 of 21, 67 yards), before he engineered the game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter and won it with his third touchdown pass. But the embattled QB is surrounded by a host of young talent (RB Quinshon Jenkins, TE Harold Fanin, WR Denzel Boston, DL Jared Verse, LB Carson Schwesinger and more) and a coach who has put them in the right places to succeed against back-to-back NFC South teams.

Maybe it won’t last. And maybe at some point this season Cleveland will be better off giving Shedeur Sanders another look. But don’t dismiss these wins as a fluke. And don’t pretend like there was anyone outside of Monken’s office who thought the Browns were capable of a 2-1 start.

Fernando Mendoza figured to be one of the most exciting rookies to watch this season, once the Las Vegas Raiders drafted him in April with the No. 1 overall pick.

Now it’s not clear if we’ll even get a chance to watch him this season at all.

The way Kirk Cousins is playing for the Raiders right now, the wait for Mendoza could be an unexpectedly long one. The 38-year-old Cousins has given the undermanned Raiders exactly what they need: relatively solid and stable play at the most important position. Cousins has thrown nine touchdown passes and just three interceptions. He threw 10 all of last year (in eight starts) and led the NFL in interceptions in 2024.

Stunningly, he's been the anchor to Las Vegas' 3-0 start.

Kirk Cousins is playing his best football since tearing his Achilles in 2023. (Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images)

Now, the Raiders' schedule has been suspect — they’ve beaten the 0-3 Dolphins, the 0-3 Dolphins and now the 1-2 Saints. But two of those wins came as road underdogs. Over the next eight weeks, they'll play Kansas City, Buffalo, the Rams, San Francisco, Seattle and Denver, so maybe the bubble is about to burst. But Cousins' presence has at least given the Raiders a chance to get better, and maybe to even stay on the fringe of the playoff chase for a little while.

As long as he’s doing that, there’s no rush for coach Klint Kubiak to turn things over to Mendoza. The kid can learn plenty by standing on the sidelines, watching the veteran lead the team, adopt good habits and build a strong culture. That’ll make it easier for Mendoza when he does finally play.

In other words, there’s no reason to rush the rookie. The Raiders’ future can wait.

Final Thoughts From Sunday ...

• The season is over in Los Angeles, at least on whatever is considered the Chargers’ side of town. At 0-3, they’re not going to survive a brutal early schedule that has them playing Seattle, Denver, Kansas City, the Rams, Houston and Baltimore over the next seven weeks. The Chargers' bigger issue is what to do about this mess. Jim Harbaugh (signed through 2028) and Justin Herbert (2029) aren’t going anywhere. They could fire their general manager (Joe Horitz) or change offensive coordinators again, but the heart of their team in 2027 will likely look a lot like it does now. 
• I am as big of a Geno Smith skeptic as you can find, but give him some credit: He was terrific against the Detroit Lions on Sunday (31 of 37, 321 yards, 3 touchdowns) and he still hasn’t thrown an interception through three games this year. I still think in the long run he’ll be a liability at QB, but he is an enormous upgrade over 2025 starter Justin Fields. Between Smith's play and the revamped defense that Aaron Glenn and GM Darren Mougey put together in the offseason, the Jets are actually competitive and watchable. They’re only 1-2 after Sunday's 31-24 defeat, but they’re far from the disaster they’ve been in recent years.
• Both Jameis Winston (stepping in for the injured Jaxson Dart) and Marcus Mariota (in for Jayden Daniels) won on Sunday, but only one team left feeling good about its backup QB. Mariota was stellar against a strong Seahawks defense (19 of 31, 183 yards, 3 TDs). Winston was shaky against a bad Titans team (14 of 22, 118 yards). Daniels is expected back in the next couple of weeks, but with Dart out for the season, the Giants are planning to bring in another veteran QB to at least push Winston. The speculation centers on free agent Jimmy Garoppolo, Chiefs backup Justin Fields and Vikings third-stringer J.J. McCarthy. The Giants were originally just looking for Winston insurance. But if his play doesn’t improve, they might be looking for someone to step in and start as soon as they’re ready.

In NFL Fallout, Ralph Vacchiano breaks down the impact of the biggest events every Sunday.