FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — To selectively monitor Mike Vrabel’s media availabilities this summer is to come away believing the 2026 New England Patriots will be lucky to win four games. Who could forget this instant classic, delivered last Saturday night after New England’s preseason game against the Philadelphia Eagles: “I do not think we have a very deep team.”At first glance, or listen, it must have been a little gasp-inducing for Patriots fans. What!? The defending AFC champions lack depth? But then came the all-important second glance, after which, it’s safe to say, most Pats fans understood where Vrabel was coming from. As The Athletic’s Chad Graff pointed out, Vrabel wasn’t criticizing the front office but pointing out several years of questionable drafting by various regimes. It also explains why Vrabel was extra, extra cautious about how and when he used his starters during the preseason, all the better to protect his assets going into the season opener next week in Seattle.But if we can put aside the specifics of Vrabel’s preseason quotage and instead do a big-picture analysis, a pattern emerges: What Vrabel has been saying, over and over and over, is that the 2026 Patriots have won nothing. The team that shocked the oddsmakers in 2025 by going 14-3 … that team no longer exists. The team that advanced all the way to Super Bowl LX before being chloroformed by the Seahawks … that team no longer exists. The hallway hugs delivered by Vrabel to his victorious players? If you want another hug, win a game first.Do the New England Patriots have a fragile foundation?Robert Mays and Derrik KlassenTrue, most coaches and managers take this attitude during the run-up to a new season following a season that was hugely successful and entertaining. And yet I’m always surprised when teams are quite comfortable showing off last year’s championship bling when they show up for a new season. Remember what happened after the 2018 Red Sox chewed up the postseason competition en route to winning Boston’s fourth World Series championship this century? Four months later, when the Sox arrived in Fort Myers, Fla., to limber up for a new season, it was as though they were still popping champagne corks on the Dodger Stadium infield.And Alex Cora, who was managing the Red Sox at the time, had no problem with that.“You turn the page because something negative happened,” Cora said during spring training in 2019. “And there’s nothing negative from 2018.”What was negative was that the 2019 Red Sox went 84-78 and failed to make the postseason. While it’d be a reach to blame the failure solely on anything said during spring training, it’s not unfair to say that the 2019 Red Sox were not a collection of hungry, eye-of-the-tiger types. And I write these words as someone who believes Cora is a fine manager who will be back in the game before the calendar year is out.Bill Belichick is the patron saint of leaving past seasons where they belong, which is in the past. Every summer, from the moment he’d empty the bag of footballs on the first day of training camp, it was no longer permissible to talk about past championships. Belichick famously broke his own rule when, in March 2023, he reached for his resume after being asked by a reporter if he could say something that would give Patriots fans a reason to be optimistic for the upcoming season. “The last 25 years,” Belichick said, as if all those seasons of deep playoff runs and Super Bowl victories were all Pats fans needed to get excited for the 2023 season.Belichick was, and is, one of the greatest coaches in NFL history. But the 2023 Pats went 4-13, and they went 4-13 because they were a lousy team. The previous 25 years didn’t help one bit. Belichick was fired, after which came one-and-done Jerod Mayo and another 4-13 campaign. And then came Vrabel, and a shocker of a 2025 season in which the Pats went 14-3 and advanced to the Super Bowl.That catches us up. It’s 2026, and the Patriots have won nothing. What’s more, says Vrabel, “I do not think we have a very deep team.”Belichick also had a way of using a simple declarative sentence to avoid talking about uncomfortable recent events. And then he’d keep using that simple declarative sentence until everybody in the room was lulled to sleep. In 2014, for example, a couple of days after the Pats were handed a 41-14 beating by the Kansas City Chiefs, Belichick signaled he was moving on from that mess by answering every question with, “We’re on to Cincinnati.” In 2016, it was, “We’re on to Seattle” after Belichick was asked repeatedly if he had written a letter that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump read aloud at a rally in Manchester, N.H.Vrabel, meeting with the media Tuesday afternoon at the team’s training facility in Foxborough, pulled a similar rabbit out of his hat:Reporter: “Mike, I know you guys are still constructing and tinkering with the roster, but do you feel that the core of it right now, the 53, could compete for another Super Bowl?”Great question!Cagey answer: “We’re focused on just competing against Seattle, not competing for something that’s going to happen in February. We’re really just trying to indoctrinate and onboard these new players to understand our language, our terminology, how we practice.”And so on.The Patriots’ 2025 season does not exist. Nor does the next Super Bowl.The Patriots are on to Seattle.