The New England Patriots gave Drake Maye his most accomplished receiving weapon yet by acquiring A.J. Brown, but one prominent NFL writer believes New England could still be headed for serious disappointment in 2026.
Hours after the blockbuster trade became official, Sports Illustrated‘s Conor Orr predicted the Patriots would fail to reach 10 wins, citing a significantly tougher schedule and the difficulty of sustaining a breakthrough season.
Sports Illustrated Predicts Patriots Regression
Orr pointed to the 2024 Detroit Lions, a team that ran up 15 wins, then fell back to nine and missed the playoffs entirely the following year. The Lions offer an ominous foreshadowing for what New England now faces in 2026, according to the SI.com prognosticator.
“After a 14â3 season and a Super Bowl run comes the crash,” Orr wrote in Sports Illustrated on Wednesday. “In almost every conceivable way, that 2024 Lions team was much better than the 2025 Patriots team that actually reached the Super Bowl. Regression happens. Schedule-induced hangovers happen.”
The schedule argument has the benefit of data to back it up. New England carried the No. 1 easiest strength of schedule across the entire NFL in 2025, according to Sharp Football Analysis data. In 2026, that cushion is largely gone. The Patriots drop to the 12th-easiest schedule in Sharp’s win-total projections, putting them near the middle of the pack in terms of schedule difficulty.
Patriots Face Rough Stretch After A.J. Brown Arrival
The back end of the 2026 slate is where the difficulty is most concentrated. From Week 10 through Week 15, New England faces the Detroit Lions in an international game in Munich, the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday Night Football, the Buffalo Bills at home, the Minnesota Vikings on Thursday Night Football and the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday Night Football in Kansas City. The Patriots also open the season on the road in Seattle in a rematch of Super Bowl LX, which the Seahawks won 29-13 last February.
New England sent a 2028 first-round pick and a 2027 fifth-round pick to Philadelphia in exchange for Brown, a three-time Pro Bowler who has surpassed 1,000 receiving yards in four consecutive seasons, according to ESPN.
Brown, who turns 29 on June 30, caught 78 passes for 1,003 yards and seven touchdowns in 2025. He reunites in Foxborough with head coach Mike Vrabel, who originally drafted him in the second round in 2019 with the Tennessee Titans.
Brown joins a receiver room that had already been upgraded in March, when the Patriots signed Romeo Doubs to a four-year deal worth $68 million with a maximum value of $80 million, according to NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport. The 25-year-old Doubs â a fourth-round pick who spent four seasons in Green Bay â posted 55 catches, a career-high 724 yards and six touchdowns for the Packers in 2025.
Maye, meanwhile, finished the 2025 regular season with a league-leading 72.0 completion percentage, 4,394 passing yards, 31 touchdowns and just eight interceptions, good enough for an MVP runner-up finish.
Whether Brown and Doubs are enough to carry New England past a tougher schedule and a bold prediction from one of the NFL’s most prominent writers is a question that Maye, Brown and Patriots coach Mike Vrabel will be attempting to answer when the season opens on September 9.
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