FOXBOROUGH - The NFL has turned the schedule-release day into a two-week event, sprinkling international game reveals with varying primetime slates - including the Thanksgiving eve contest that the league’s Park Avenue office told me I wanted (I don’t recall being consulted, and were I, that would not have been my answer). But this is part of the plan to saturate (oversaturate?) the market with football even when it’s not football season.
Meanwhile, Patriots’ players don’t share the same sense of anticipation as most. That’s because they (like me) are resigned to it being what it will be, including having to play their season opener in Seattle in a Super Bowl rematch.
“I'm happy about the situation of hearing the schedule off the fact that we're getting closer to what we love to be a part of, but at the end of the day, we're not looking too far forward,” Marcus Jones said Tuesday. “I would say, of course, you know, Super Bowl rematch, but at the end of the day, (it’s about) controlling what we can control, and it's a lot of things that we got to get installed, training camp … preseason, everything. But we're excited about week one.”
For Jones, seeing the 2026-27 schedule means deciding which family member will attend which game, but otherwise, “it’s out of my control.” Brenden Schooler views it similarly, especially with this being his first opportunity to play at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
“I'm really excited to go play out there,” he said, “I got 90% of my family still in Orange County, so I'm sure they'll be, they'll be out there repping Schooler Strong.”
That’s not to say that the 29-13 loss in Super Bowl 60 didn’t leave a mark. We heard that from players earlier this offseason, and Jones and Schooler feel the same way, even though they realize a game in September - and a win - won’t have the same meaning as it would have had they accomplished what they set out to in Santa Clara back in February.
“I think you always have a chip on your shoulder when you’re up against somebody who you previously lost to the year before,” Schooler said, then contracting himself by adding. “I’m treating it just like another game. I’m going to go out there, I’m going to be composed just like I was in the Super Bowl when we played them. Nothing’s really changed except just the date we’re playing each other and the location we’re playing each other. I’m going to go out there and kind of treat the game just how I did in the Super Bowl.”
“At the end of the day, we put in a lot of work. You get all the way to where you wanted to be, and we didn’t get the job done,” Jones said. “I mean, we understand it, but we know our potential, and we know how far we can go. You have a lot of guys who are back on a team that’s been in those situations, so we understand that. We don’t want that to happen again.”
BOUTTE BUZZ
As we reported here weeks ago, Kayshon Boutte has not been