The number of metaphors I could use to describe the 2025-2026 New England Patriots season is, frankly, embarrassing.

They are a fleeting moment of Camusian Bonheur, of transient, solitary happiness that cannot be sustained but cannot be equaled. They are a moment of the sublime, indescribable and eluding capture. They are a limit-experience. They are the fire that burned twice as bright but half as long. They are Icarus, who flew too high too soon and their wings were singed by the four-man pass rush of the Seattle Seahaw—I mean, the Sun.

Fundamentally, they are impermanent; a team that exceeded expectations to such a degree that it would have been silly if they also went down in history as a Super Bowl champion. It would have commanded a whole different suite of metaphors, sure, but it also would not have been fitting. And with rhetorical devices, NFL free agency signings and trying to get into a club in Berlin, it’s all about the fit.

Everything went right for this team, all at once and at the perfect time. Every rookie played well, every free agent did their job perfectly, every young player got better. They beat every team in front of them for months. The play calling was wildly better, the coaching was monumentally better and the vibes were astronomically higher. How many more superlative adjectives do I have?

A huge part of that success came from organizational competence. Mike Vrabel’s effect was felt immediately, and the roster improved overnight due to aggressive spending and clearly top-tier talent evaluation. It was addition by addition, too, since the players held over from last year were freed up to impact the game with better pieces around them. If you had to take one thing away from this season, it’s that the Patriots are a serious, credible franchise again. After three consecutive years of being objectively terrible, that’s a real achievement.

If you had to take two things away from the season, notice also the importance of luck and exploiting your specific situation to its maximum output. The Patriots had a hilariously easy schedule, though that is owing mostly to the NFL’s own procedures to give terrible teams a chance at not-being-terrible the following year. But the playoffs also broke absurdly favorably; the Chargers (who weren’t good), the Texans (who were kind of good, but in a snowstorm), and the Broncos (who were good… without their quarterback, also in a snowstorm). The Seahawks were far and away the best team they faced this year; they got worked for 60 minutes, and none of it felt like a fluke.

But that is the perfect destiny of this team. You can read hundreds of pieces pan-searing Drake Maye for his abysmal performance and discussing what it means for his future; here are three of them if that’s what you want. But for this season only, the Patriots saw their second-year quarterback in a dead heat for the MVP award, won 17 games, and played in the Super Bowl despite no one in New England thinking that was possible before the season. It would have been absurd if they also etched their name in history.

This team was beautiful because it was so unexpected. It was spectacular, singular and fleeting, much like everything that pushes the limits of human experience. It was the right feeling; I was not sufficiently stressed about the result of this game beforehand, mostly because I was still unable to comprehend how this had happened. After-the-fact explanations of the Patriots’ success this year do not capture that feeling, that total dumbfoundedness, that was universal among New Englanders like myself.

It was a wonderful feeling, and a wonderful season, and it almost had to fall short in the end. This team was never certain of itself, it was not particularly poised, mature or confident in the ways champions generally are. It was simply a crack squad of players who barely knew each other in September and almost made it to the summit. They didn’t get there, and that’s alright. The point is that the climb was everything I could have wanted.

There will be a time for talk about championship windows, the importance of capitalizing on your quarterback’s rookie contract, next year’s schedule — all that fun stuff. But this team was a supernova, and right after a star explodes, I doubt anyone thinks about the long-term gravitational consequences. It’s a vivid, multicolored stardust-scattering extravaganza. It was not beautiful because we’ll remember it or because of what it means; it was beautiful simply because it was. Transient, imperfect but absolutely unmatched in inexplicable glory, I’ll remember them for that.