Drake Maye insists hell be just fine for Super Bowl 2026 after Patriots injury scare

SAN JOSE, Calif.— Drake Maye didn’t stiff-arm questions about his shoulder.Maye — who completed just 10 of his 21 passes when the Patriots won the snowy AFC Championship game — was a limited participant in practices last week because of a shoulder injury and an undisclosed illness.A starting quarterback with a shoulder injury is about as big as the football news gets at the sideshow-filled Super Bowl, but Maye said he thinks that he turned a corner in his recovery Sunday.He put it to the test Monday.“I feel good.

I’ll be just fine.I threw a good bit,” Maye said of his workout before appearing 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 concerns about limitations on his MVP candidate come Monday?“Nope,” McDaniels said succinctly.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 nine Super Bowl appearances ago.Mike Vrabel was a linebacker for those Patriots, who cherished proving doubters wrong 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 guilty about Bill Belichick’s Hall of Fame snub.Goodell handed out the punishment (a maximum $500,000 fine to Belichick and the loss of a first-round draft pick) for the 2007 Spygate scandal that allegedly played a role in some voters keeping Belichick out of the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.“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 hi...