Or that the offensive line<\/a> \u2014 most especially left tackle Will Campbell \u2014 has an absolutely vital offseason ahead.<\/p>\nNew England\u2019s $35 million to $40 million in 2026 salary cap space \u2014 while an above-average margin \u2014 will have to be spent very wisely this offseason. The skill position pieces around Maye (most especially at wide receiver) will require a lot of attention. His line will need additions, and possibly even some reshuffling. The defense will require depth and extensions, most notably with cornerback Christian Gonzalez. And the well of 11 draft picks will have to produce some players capable of stepping in and having an impact as rookies.<\/p>\n
For any franchise, that\u2019s a lot of work. For a team that just lost in the Super Bowl, it\u2019s a surprising amount of heavy earth that still has to be moved. But there\u2019s also one significant step forward that appears to finally be out of the way: Even in a postseason when he accounted for only six touchdowns against four interceptions, seven fumbles and was sacked 21 times \u2014 even when he made several costly mistakes in the biggest game of his life \u2014 New England\u2019s quarterback sounded resolute in the desolation of his first title shot.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThere\u2019s plays I\u2019ll think about for the next probably seven months, until we\u2019re back in September playing the first one [of the season],\u201d Maye said Sunday night. \u201cThat\u2019s the nature of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
On some days, in the absolute biggest game, so is losing. And Maye didn\u2019t know that a year ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA CLARA, Calif. \u2014 About 10 minutes into a despondent postgame sigh, the reality settled in for Drake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,85190,6583,19364,22024,5374,2363,629,42502,5384,1231,593,73299,1275,1254,85,7508,30663,1272,23937],"class_list":{"0":"post-468309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-ben-roethlisberger","11":"tag-brock-purdy","12":"tag-christian-gonzalez","13":"tag-colin-kaepernick","14":"tag-drake-maye","15":"tag-jayden-daniels","16":"tag-joe-burrow","17":"tag-mike-vrabel","18":"tag-new-england","19":"tag-new-england-patriots","20":"tag-nfl","21":"tag-quarterbacks","22":"tag-russell-wilson","23":"tag-seattle-seahawks","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-super-bowl","26":"tag-tom-brady","27":"tag-washington-commanders","28":"tag-will-campbell"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}