Where Patriots Land On ESPN’s Early 2025 Power Ranking After Super Bowl

The book on the 2024 NFL season was closed Sunday night. And while the Eagles will have plenty of time to celebrate their Super Bowl LIX title, the majority of the football world is onto the 2025 campaign.

Before you know it, the league will congregate in Indianapolis for this year’s NFL Scouting Combine. Mere weeks after the prospect showcase, there will be plenty of wheeling and dealing once the league’s new year officially kicks off. And of course, the NFL will welcome a whole crop of new talent in late April via the 2025 draft.

All told, it’s never too early to look ahead, and ESPN did exactly that Monday morning after Philadelphia prevented a Kansas City three-peat. The Worldwide Leader put together an early power ranking for the 2025 season, which slotted the New England Patriots at No. 24.

“First-year coach Mike Vrabel will be the primary decision-maker in building the team in his vision, as the Patriots targeted him to help spark a turnaround,” Mike Reiss wrote. “The Patriots are coming off back-to-back 4-13 seasons under former head coaches Bill Belichick and Jerod Mayo. Vrabel said the presence of rookie Drake Maye, a ‘young dynamic quarterback,’ was one of the top reasons he was interested in the job, and now the goal is to put pieces around him.”

Ranking 24th obviously is not desirable, but after winning a combined eight games the past two seasons, it’s pretty telling that ESPN put the Patriots just barely inside the bottom third of the league. Like so many others, the network clearly believes Vrabel will inspire a turnaround in Foxboro, Mass., where Maye has a chance to become one of the NFL’s best QBs.

Will New England be the last team standing next season? Almost certainly not. But the Patriots’ road back to Super Bowl contention might not be as long as it looked right after they finished the season.