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Quiz time! Before Super Bowl LX, do you know the only team that held the Patriots to 13 points or fewer last season? The stumbling, bumbling, not-so-bad-to-the-bone-anymore Las Vegas Raiders. Yes, the worst team in football. The Pats lost to Las Vegas in a dreary season opener, where Drake Maye looked skittish, threw an inaccurate ball all afternoon and the start of the Mike Vrabel era flopped like a bad comic bombing with his opening joke. The good news, of course, is the Pats killed the rest of the night right until the end. So, a reminder: Week 1 is annually the most anticipated and least telling game on the NFL calendar. The Patriots know this better than most teams, not just because of that loss to Las Vegas, but their shocking 19-10 opening win at Cincinnati in 2024, then the franchise’s biggest upset win in almost a decade. But after that, as we all remember, the Jerod Mayo-era Pats lost just about everything: games, belief in one another and ownership’s faith in the direction of the program under its handpicked successor to Bill Belichick. (Not to mention the 2008 Patriots, who lost Tom Brady in the first quarter of their opener, and not only won that game but finished 11-5.) So yes, Wednesday’s debut in Seattle was an exciting rematch layered with new storylines, fresh wounds and old demons, no doubt. But it should not be treated as predictive for the rest of the season. And with that, a few more reminders and final thoughts as the Patriots charge into a New Year. Win-win on Gonzalez contract I, for one, am glad this saga is over. Gonzalez inked a 4-year, $135 million contract with $102 million total in guarantees, with more than $53 million fully guaranteed at signing. This is a fair contract that made complete sense the moment Seattle extended Devon Witherspoon, another elite cornerback plucked from the first round of the 2023 draft, to a record-setting deal in mid-August. So, what was the hang-up? According to sources, Gonzalez’s camp held out for more fully guaranteed money, specifically over the first two years, and wanted a payout structure than what the Patriots had written into their long-standing offer before Monday night’s revisions and agreement. In the end, fully guaranteed money is where Gonzalez gave some ground, while the Pats made some concessions in return. Gonzalez’s deal fell short of the $59 million Witherspoon had fully guaranteed, the most ever for a cornerback, an 18% increase over the previous mark set by the Rams’ Trent McDuffie. Gonzalez instead received $53.9 million, the second-most ever for a corner. But, according to reports, the Patriots increased the average annual salary in their offer and rewrote some of the language in their offer that largely went unchanged and unanswered over the last few weeks. Bottom line: both sides gave in to make a deal that made sense and beat an unofficial deadline they refused to acknowledge in public. Gonzalez reset the market by several metrics, but not all, and the Patriots agreed to some changes that ensured their No. 1 corner suited up Wednesday night and would remain under team control for years. Win-win. Small credit to Krafts By extending Gonzalez, the Patriots have reset their franchise record for richest player contract for the second time in as many years. Just like last season, they again ranked in the top 10 by guaranteed free-agent dollars spent. And last June, they acquired A.J. Brown and his $29 million salary, which for a time made him the highest-paid player on the Patriots. As my colleague, Doug Kyed, posted on social media shortly after Gonzalez’s contract was reported, it’s a new era in New England as far as roster spending is concerned. The Patriots ranked dead last in cash spending from 2014-23, per ESPN. But since 2024, when Eliot Wolf ascended to the top of the front office and the Bill Belichick era ended, they’ve soared up the rankings. Now, NFL owners do not deserve credit for doing business as business should be done. If you draft and develop elite players, you pay to keep them. That’s what they did with Gonzalez. These are billionaires with billion-dollar assets that only appreciate in value without them lifting a finger, and assets they can now break up and sell off in slivers private equity, as the Krafts did last year for a cool $720 million. Furthermore, franchises are closer to a type of public trust than a traditional business. You own a team to win, and you owe it to the community, to which your team really belongs, to pay for that pursuit of winning. Extending Gonzalez will help the Patriots contend for years to come, the bare minimum required of owners who double as stewards of these franchises. If, for whatever reason, the Patriots had traded Gonzalez, their hopes of contending this season would have been shot. But as it pertains to roster spending, we can, for now, dispense with all criticism of the Krafts when it comes to being cheap. Those allegations are simply no longer supported by the facts. Now, if you want to get on ownership for being cheap, try things like a lack of WiFi on the team plane, which appears to have forced the team to release its Monday injury report hours earlier than they would have before departing for Seattle mid-afternoon. At least, according to them, there aren’t any Air Kraft ashtrays anymore. Did you know? The Patriots entered kickoff Wednesday night with a four-game losing streak against the Seahawks, their longest active losing streak versus any single opponent. They have three-game losing streaks in their series with two other franchises: the Raiders and Chiefs, who are also on their regular-season schedule this season.