Drake Maye's rise is just one of many reasons to believe the Patriots are back for good. Adam Glanzman / Getty ImagesSept. 1, 2026 Updated “The Athletic Football Show” is previewing all 32 teams leading up to the start of the 2026 NFL season. Below are select quotes from the show’s preview of the New England Patriots. The quotes are edited for clarity. You can watch the whole preview on YouTube and in the embedded video below, or listen to the full AFC East preview wherever you get your podcasts.Dave Helman on what about the Patriots most excites him: Drake Maye throwing to legitimately badass receivers, specifically A.J. Brown. I’ve gone pretty hard on my A.J. Brown enthusiasm this offseason, but he was 17th in yards per route run last year. All of his metrics, considering what the Eagles offense was, are still plenty good.On top of that, as much as we talk about him, Romeo Doubs finished 29th in yards per route run last year. I was curious about teams that have two receivers that finished in the top 30 last year. There are a few. Obviously, Dallas is a big one. The Rams and Lions are there. Ironically, Washington is now that Stefon Diggs is there with Terry McLaurin I would not have guessed that. And then New England. Those are the teams.Derrik Klassen on what he’s watching the first month of the season: What do all of the big beefy boy shifts on the line for the offense mean? Obviously you have Jared Wilson moving to center, which was his native position coming out of college. I thought he was fine last year at guard, but I think him being at center probably protects him a little bit more physically, which I think, if anything, was not the best part of his game. He had enough to get by, not enough to be a difference-maker at that position. The last one among those, I include bringing in Reggie Gilliam at fullback. We just talked about the Bills losing him and he’s about as good as it gets in terms of moving people around in the run game.Robert Mays on what’s keeping him up at night: I think this entire thing is built on a more fragile foundation than you want it to be. And it extends to a couple different areas. The first part that I think is worth pointing out—we did this and kind of stumbled into the idea when we were looking at the Seahawks roster and just how well they had drafted over the last few years, and you looked at all of the in-house draft picks that were central to making up the overall quality of Seattle’s roster. We found the same for the Eagles roster the year before that. How many guys that are in-house rookie contract players for the Patriots are actually making an impact on this team this year or are set to make an impact on this team this year? Five? The 2023 and 2024 draft classes for this team are non existent outside of Christian Gonzalez and Drake Maye. It’s really hard to be a very good NFL team for an extended period of time when you are made like this, when you’ve had to dip into free agency and the trade market to find the difference-making players that you have.Subscribe to “The Athletic Football Show” on YouTube