After three straight dropping seasons, this 12 months’s Patriots drew the NFL’s third-easiest schedule, dealing with opponents with a mixed .429 win proportion in 2024. However can they get above .500 in 2025?
Common-season win complete: 8.5 (BetMGM)
Outlook: New England might do no higher than 4 wins in every of the previous two seasons, which prompted staff proprietor Robert Kraft to maneuver on from head coach Jerod Mayo after one season and herald former Patriots linebacker Mike Vrabel.
It additionally loosened the staff’s purse strings because the Patriots spent a league-high $365M on free brokers with $197M in ensures, per Over the Cap. Amongst these becoming a member of the staff are defensive finish Milton Williams (4 years, $104M), extensive receiver Stefon Diggs (three years, $69M) and former Titans linebacker Harold Landry III (three years, $43.5M).
Vrabel performed a component in drafting Landry whereas head coach of the Titans in 2018 and led him to a Professional Bowl season in 2021. Williams is coming off a breakout season with Philadelphia that included a pair of sacks in Tremendous Bowl LIX, and Diggs has six 1,000-yard seasons in his 10-year profession and will have had one other if not for a torn ACL that ended his 2024 season after eight video games.
New gamers apart, the Patriots will go so far as second-year quarterback Drake Maye can take them subsequent season. New England took Maye third general within the 2024 NFL Draft, and whereas he confirmed promise, the staff went 3-9 in his 12 begins.
Regardless of these numbers, some oddsmakers stay excessive on Maye and the Patriots. Whereas the staff was favored to win no video games final season, DraftKings has New England favored in 11 of its 17 video games in 2025.
Even former Patriot Rob Gronkowski is on board. Throughout an look on the “Bussin’ With the Boys” podcast, Gronkowski spoke extremely of the hiring of Vrabel and the staff’s method to rebuilding the roster.
“What they’re doing in New England, you may’t actually argue with any of the strikes that they’ve made to date. I believe they’ve made each transfer appropriately with the draft with who they took, all the best way from free company, they’d all of that cash they usually went and bought the blokes they wanted to get for the positions they wanted to get. I’m happening file to say that they’re making the playoffs this 12 months,” Gronk stated.
Our take: Who’re we to argue with Gronk? Assuming Will Campbell, the fourth general decide on this 12 months’s draft, can maintain down the left sort out spot and second-round operating again TreVeyon Henderson lightens the load for fifth-year operating again Rhamondre Stevenson, the Patriots might see double-digit wins in 2025.
Predicted win complete: 10
