Back in July, appearing on The Dan Patrick Show, Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald was asked who could’ve helped him win his first Super Bowl ring, which would surprise Dan. Macdonald named John Harbaugh and added there’s one more person “that really helped us out that had some conflict of interest.” Hearing that, many believed Tom Brady might have helped the Seahawks in Super Bowl LX. Cut to August, and New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel was asked about those comments. While Vrabel connected Brady to a coaching hire, he dismissed the idea that this outside help to Macdonald is why the Patriots lost 29-13.

“He hired his offensive coordinator,” Vrabel said on WEEI’s The Greg Hill Show. “But that’s not why we lost the game. We talk to a lot of people, and there’s a lot of film, and it’s not why we lost the game. I mean, I’m sure they talked. He hired his offensive coordinator.”

Ahead of Super Bowl LX, Brady has sparked a controversy by saying he didn’t have a dog in the fight. Then, on February 2nd, just 6 days before the big game, Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak agreed to terms on a contract that would make him the 25th head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. Brady, being a minority owner of the Raiders, plays an active part in how the franchise runs itself, so many jumped to connect the dots.

Now, while Vrabel was dismissive about Brady’s role in helping the Seahawks, his quarterback, Drake Maye, sees things differently. When Maye appeared on another WEEI Boston’s Sports Original segment, he was asked whether he believes Tom Brady helped the Seahawks and, if yes, would that make him mad? Struggling for words at first, Maye called this narrative a deception.

“I really can’t even think about him – how much it would help even if he were to – I feel like – help Seattle out,” Maye said. “I think it’s hard for me to even judge it or say that. I think it’s such a – there’s plays out there to be made, and how much information he could give based off what we’re doing in practice and when nobody’s watching is hard to say. So, I don’t have much to say about that. I think it is what it is, and whether it happened or not, it’s all smoke and mirrors, and who knows, [if] we’ll ever find out.”

Even last month, when Coach Vrabel was making that connection, he noted that Brady’s comments about not having a dog in the fight were also just a way to solidify himself with the Raiders more than anything else.

“Clearly Tom’s going out of his way to make it known that he’s trying – that he has a new job and a new role,” Vrabel said. “It is really what it is. Tom’s a friend. He’ll always be a friend. He’s a former teammate. But I mean, he’s made it clear, like, ‘I’m doing something new now.’”

And that does seem to be the case, going by what Mike Macdonald has already clarified. Just days after he sparked questions with his comments on the Dan Patrick Show, Macdonald was asked to clarify whether he was referring to Tom Brady. But per notable radio host Zach Gelb, Macdonald shut it down.

“I reached out to Mike Macdonald to get clarification on his comments on the [Dan Patrick Show],” Gelb wrote on X. “I asked if Tom Brady was the person with the ‘conflict of interest’ that gave input to the Seahawks before the Super Bowl. Mike told me it wasn’t Brady that he was talking about in the interview.”

Now, if you look at the X’s and O’s, the Patriots simply looked outmatched against Seattle’s defense in that game because Macdonald completely altered his game plan. Throughout the 2025 regular season, the Seahawks built a reputation of not blitzing enough. In the Super Bowl, they blitzed even less, but there was one thing that haunted Drake Maye for sure. In the first half, Macdonald ordered a blitz on Maye on a whopping 33.3% of dropbacks. Even when that number dropped to 8% in the second half, the lead Seattle wanted was already theirs.

Cornerback Devon Witherspoon – who’d been kept away from the quarterbacks most of the regular season – rushed Drake Maye seven times in the game, with one of those rushes becoming a pick-six at the hands of Uchenna Nwosu that sealed the game. The Patriots finally showed some spark in the fourth quarter after going scoreless for the first three, but it was too late by then.

Now, with the season opener between the Seahawks and the Patriots just a few days away, Drake Maye has a chance to show everything he could’ve done differently seven months ago. Meanwhile, whether this Super Bowl rematch ends with a Patriots victory or not, Tom Brady will still be focused and betting on his current team in Vegas.