Forty-five points. At home. In a building that opened in 2002 and had never seen the Patriots give up that many.
The Patriots-Packers 45-27 final set a franchise record for points allowed at Gillette Stadium. Green Bay forced four turnovers, scored 21 points off them, and the Packers did not trail once. Jordan Love threw for 372 yards and three touchdowns and ran for another.
New England is 5-4. Green Bay is 6-3. The standings say that is a fine place to be. The tape says it was a mess.
I’m starting with the quarterback, because he’s the reason this got ugly.
Drake Maye threw three interceptions after throwing just one in his previous four games. He still finished 21 of 38 for 299 yards and three touchdowns, which is the cruel part. The box score looks like a quarterback having a decent day. The scoreboard says he handed Green Bay a head start.
Maye himself said after the game that he threw into spots where he shouldn’t have, and he talked about turnovers being the gap between winning and losing. He’s right on both counts.
My opinion: this step backward is the real worry. One bad afternoon happens to every young quarterback. What matters is that the Patriots had a four-game stretch in which Maye threw just one pick, and the Packers dismantled that in a single game. If the turnovers come back as a habit, nothing else on this roster is good enough to cover for them.
The Packers had absolutely no respect for Kyle Williams, allowing their safeties to be aggressive and bait Drake Maye.
With a better X receiver (AJ Brown?) Drake Maye likely has only 1 or 0 interceptions in the game. pic.twitter.com/ZJEl1vFHp9
— Savage (@Savageboston) November 10, 2026
Maybe it’s the scheme and the receivers. Maybe Maye gets bailed out with a better target on the outside. I’d like to believe that. I just don’t think the interceptions were all somebody else’s fault.
Now the defense. My opinion: the secondary looks thin.
Carlton Davis III left with a knee injury in the second quarter. Rookie Karon Prunty was in coverage on the Packers score that followed. Rhamondre Stevenson fumbled, which set up a Packers touchdown, and then left late in the third quarter with a knee injury of his own. Mike Vrabel said afterward that the extent of it isn’t known, so nobody should pretend to know more than that.
The Globe’s injury rundown also had Will Campbell and Ben Brown going down with knee injuries. Nobody wants to hear excuses, and the Patriots aren’t offering any. It still matters that the cornerbacks lost Davis mid-game against a quarterback who was cooking.
Love threw for 372 yards. Strip out the injuries and that number is still a problem.
Milton Williams said the team let one mistake snowball and never stopped the bleeding. That’s the whole game in a sentence, and it’s also the question for the rest of this season. A 5-4 team with a quarterback who just gave the ball away three times and a secondary that shrank in the second quarter is not as settled as the record says.