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 his annual Super Bowl week news conference. “But there’s a decision-making process.”
Goodell took special exception to the idea that he sits on a board of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, specifying that his role (and the unaffiliated NFL’s) is only to approve the 50 media-member voters.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft — Belichick’s former partner in a dynasty turned archnemesis — sat in the front 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 statement Sunday at the Grammy Awards, which only added to speculation that he could use his bigger 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 discussed 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 speculation that the NFL is bound to expand the schedule to 18 games might be premature, Goodell said in a slightly less optimistic stance than he has taken in the past.
“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 international games — there will be nine in 2026 — and have every team participate 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) hired so far are minorities.
But Goodell is not “resigned” to accepting that the Rooney Rule is not having the desired impact.
“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.”