SAN JOSE, Calif. — Drake Maye didn’t stiff-arm questions about his shoulder.
Maye — who accomplished just 10 of his 21 passes when the Patriots won the snowy AFC Championship sport — was a restricted participant in practices last week because of a shoulder harm and an undisclosed sickness.
A beginning quarterback with a shoulder harm is about as massive as the soccer news gets at the sideshow-filled Super Bowl, but Maye said he thinks that he turned a nook in his restoration Sunday.
He put it to the take a look at Monday.
“I feel good. I’ll be just fine. I threw a good bit,” Maye said of his exercise before showing at Super Bowl LX Opening Night. “I threw as much as I would in a normal practice, and it felt great.”
Does offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels have any considerations about limitations on his MVP candidate come Monday?
“Nope,” McDaniels said succinctly.
Drake Maye makes an attempt a throw for the Patriots during their AFC Championship sport against the Broncos on Jan. 25. Getty Images
Much ado about nothing?
“I really had no doubt being 100 percent for the game — this is the Super Bowl,” Maye said. “We get two weeks to prepare for it and do whatever we have to do to get it right. I have confidence.”
The last time the Patriots were a Super Bowl underdog was February 2002.
That’s six championships and 9 Super Bowl appearances in the past.
Mike Vrabel was a linebacker for these Patriots, who cherished proving doubters unsuitable as 14-point underdogs to the Rams.
He’s head coach now and his team is a 4.5-point underdog.
“Somebody has to [be],” Vrabel said. “We don’t dislike it.”
Roger Goodell is feeling more confused than responsible about Bill Belichick’s Hall of Fame snub.
Goodell handed out the punishment (a most $500,000 positive to Belichick and the loss of a first-round draft choose) for the 2007 Spygate scandal that allegedly performed a function in some voters holding Belichick out of the Hall of Fame on the first poll.
“Second-winningest coach in NFL history, six Super Bowls as a head coach and two as a defensive coordinator, that’s a Hall of Fame career,” Goodell said Monday during his annual Super Bowl week news convention. “But there’s a decision-making process.”
Roger Goodell addresses reporters during his Feb. 2 press convention. Imagn Images
Goodell took particular exception to the thought that he sits on a board of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, specifying that his function (and the unaffiliated NFL’s) is only to approve the 50 media-member voters.
Patriots proprietor Robert Kraft — Belichick’s former associate in a dynasty turned archnemesis — sat in the entrance row as Goodell spoke. Kraft also is nominated for the 2026 Hall of Fame class.
“Bill Belichick’s record goes without saying — same with the Patriots and Robert Kraft,” Goodell said. “They’re spectacular. They’ve contributed so much to this game and I believe they’ll be Hall of Famers.”
Super Bowl LX halftime performer Bad Bunny made an anti-ICE assertion Sunday at the Grammy Awards, which only added to hypothesis that he could use his larger platform at the Super Bowl for political messaging.
Goodell called the Puerto Rican rapper, who sings most of his lyrics in Spanish, “one of the greatest artists of the world.”
Goodell made it clear that he and Bad Bunny have mentioned expectations.
“He understood the platform he was on,” Goodell said. “This platform is used to unite people and to be able to bring people together with their creativity, with their talent, and to be able to use this moment to do that. I think artists in the past have done that. I think Bad Bunny understands that, and I think he’ll have a great performance.”
All the hypothesis that the NFL is certain to increase the schedule to 18 video games might be untimely, Goodell said in a barely less optimistic stance than he has taken in the previous.
“It is something that we want to talk about with the union,” Goodell said. “It is not a given.”
Goodell’s plan is to push the schedule to 16 worldwide video games — there will be 9 in 2026 — and have every team take part in one per season.
Only one of the NFL’s 10 head coach vacancies went to a minority (Robert Saleh).
Only two offensive coordinators (Mike McDaniel and Eric Bieniemy) employed so far are minorities.
But Goodell is not “resigned” to accepting that the Rooney Rule is not having the desired impression.
“We still have more to do,” Goodell said. “We’re in a competitive league. Teams are trying to get the coach they think could win.”
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