The first nine weeks of the 2025 NFL season are in the books, and they have been quite successful for the New England Patriots. The team’s overall record of 7-2 speaks for itself, but achieving it would not have been possible without some impressive individual performances as well.
Let’s honor those at the halfway point of the season.
Who gets your Patriots midseason awards?
First a look at what our staff thinks, and then it’s on to your answers.
Rich Hill
MVP: QB Drake Maye. Easy. The team was always going to go as far as their second-year quarterback could develop, but no one could have anticipated he’d take such a leap forward into the MVP conversation for the entire league.
Best Offensive Player: WR Stefon Diggs. This unit has gone from one of the worst in the league over the past couple of years to one of the best and Diggs is the biggest addition. He’s been a mid-level WR1 in his return from injury, which is meant as legitimate praise.
Best Defensive Player: CB Christian Gonzalez. He’s missed time for a few different injuries, but it’s incredibly apparent that they’re a top 10 unit in the league when he’s healthy and a bottom 10 unit when he’s out.
Best Rookie: LT Will Campbell. He’s stepped in on the left side and has been an average starter through the first half of his rookie campaign, which is all you can really ask for. He’s young and the sky is the limit.
Best Free Agency Signing:
Best Coach: OC Josh McDaniels. He has the offense humming as one of the most efficient passing attacks in the entire league, and has been able to cover for one of the worst rushing attacks.
Biggest Surprise: How bad the rushing attack has been. Keeping this on the offensive side of the ball, but no one could have anticipated that the Patriots would have the second-worst rushing attack in football.
Best Game: Patriots 23, Bills 20, IN BUFFALO. This was the Patriots coming out party as a contender in an otherwise weak year for the league. It might not have been the prettiest or most efficient outing, but it was certainly the most meaningful.
Matt St. Jean
MVP: Drake Maye. Drake Maye was a talented but flawed QB in 2024, one who showed flashes but who needed serious refinement. In 2025, he isn’t just the most valuable player on the Patriots – he’s a serious contender for most valuable player in the league. His combination of athleticism and quick decision-making has unlocked every area of the field for New England’s offense.
Best Offensive Player: Stefon Diggs. Recovering from a torn ACL, many weren’t sure what Stefon Diggs would be in 2025. What they’ve gotten is a receiver averaging 2.29 yards per route run, his best mark since 2022. Outside of Maye, no one has been better than Diggs on offense for New England.
Best Defensive Player: Milton Williams. In 2024, no Patriots defensive tackle had 20 pressures on the season. Through 9 games in 2025, Williams has 32 pressures while also being a team leader and a key part of New England’s elite run defense. Money well spent.
Best Rookie: Will Campbell, honorable mention to Andy Borregales. I was a doubter of how Will Campbell would fare at left tackle in the NFL, and I am happy to say he has largely proved me wrong thus far. Campbell has been a massive improvement at one of the weakest links on the offensive line from a season ago. Rookie kicker Andy Borregales deserves a mention here as well after bouncing back from a tough start to provide stability in the kicking game.
Best Free Agency Signing: Milton Williams. The Patriots paid Milton Williams to improve their defense, and he’s done that by being the best player on the unit.
Best Coach: Josh McDaniels. McDaniels has empowered Drake Maye to be his best self. He has designed an offense that gives him the ability to attack defenses in many ways while designing protection plans that keep him clean. Add in well-timed “easy buttons” in the offense to give easy opportunities to the young quarterback, and this offense is humming while helping Maye develop. The real highlight for McDaniels was his 7-play, 77-yard 2nd-half opening touchdown drive against the top-ranker Browns defense that had an excellent unit scrambling and put the game on ice.
Biggest Surprise: Kayshon Boutte. Boutte has emerged as an elite deep threat for Drake Maye in 2025. He ranks 1st in the NFL in yards per target and 2nd in yards per reception while catching 3 out of every 4 targets. His sure hands and savvy route running have impressed someone who was skeptical about how high his ceiling in the NFL could be.
Best Game: Patriots at Bills. First Sunday Night Football game in two seasons, and you go on the road to defeat the reigning MVP and a top Super Bowl contender on the backs of your developing young quarterback capped by a game-winning field goal from your rookie kicker. From the Stefon Diggs catch along the sidelines to the Drake Maye stiff-arm to the team embracing Borregales, this game is filled with iconic moments on the night that proved the Patriots are officially back.
Pat Lane
MVP: Drake Maye, this one is a slam dunk pick. Maye not only is the MVP of the Patriots, he’s playing the MVP of the whole dang league. If Maye can sustain this play, the sky is the limit for the Patriots this year and for years into the future.
Best Offensive Player: Stefon Diggs, This is obviously outside of Maye, but he’s been everything we could’ve hoped for and more since coming over to the Patriots in free agency. Diggs has brought leadership for the entire room, and has been the team’s most consistent weapon on offense. He’s been fantastic for the team and has helped turn around the receiver room.
Best Defensive Player: Marcus Jones, This award could’ve gone to a few guys, and I know he had some struggles in the goal line against Drake London on Sunday, but Marcus Jones has been incredible for the Patriots this season. He’s been a lockdown slot defender, consistently made plays in every game in the pass and run game, and has contributed on special teams as well. His play was rewarded with a shiny new contract, and, if he keeps this play up, that deal is going to be a bargain.
Best Rookie: Will Campbell, The Patriots were in desperate need of consistent tackle play, and they’ve gotten that with the 4th pick in the draft. Campbell hasn’t just been the Patriots best tackle, he has graded out as one of the 20 best tackles in the NFL for the first half of his rookie year. It hasn’t always been perfect, but we very rarely have to talk about his play, which is exactly what you want out of your offensive linemen.
Best Free Agent Signing: Milton Williams, The Patriots were hoping for a guy who would be a game wrecker when they signed Williams away from the Eagles, and they’ve gotten just that from Williams. He’s been nearly unblockable, and has been a dominant force in both the run and pass game. He also has been a leader on and off the field, with teammates raving about his work ethic in the weight and meeting rooms. So far, he’s been worth every penny of the $104M contract they gave him this offseason.
Best Coach: Josh McDaniels, It hasn’t been all McDaniels, but there’s no doubt that part of the reason why the offense is playing so well is because of Josh’s scheme. His ability to adjust to what the defense is throwing at the offense is elite. To nurture a young quarterback, you need a great offensive coordinator, and, while he’s proven he’s not a good head coach(which actually helps the Patriots), he has proven that he’s still one of the best coordinators in the game today.
Biggest Surprise: Drake Maye, I think we were all excited about Drake Maye coming into this season. He showed flashes last year, and he looked poised to make a leap with McDaniels as his offensive coordinator, but this season is about as shocking as a season as you’ll ever see from a player. He went from being unable to beat out Jacoby Brissett for the starting job out of camp to being a legitimate MVP candidate in 15 months. Not even the most optimistic of Patriots fans could’ve seen this coming.
Best Game: Bills, The Patriots have played some very good games, but the Sunday night matchup in Buffalo takes the cake so far this season. The combination of the Patriots introducing themselves on a national stage and Drake Maye making multiple jaw-dropping plays makes this game the best game of the season. Add in the fact that it ended with a game winning drive and 52 yard field goal, and you have the best game of the season… so far.
Matthew Rewinski
MVP: Drake Maye and it’s not close. There’s gonna be a lot of chalk picks in this exercise, and this is the chalkiest. 2025 Drake is conservatively the 98th-percentile outcome you could hope for in your wildest dreams when you spend a top-5 pick on a QB! Outside of a couple weird games to open the season, Maye has played tetherball with our enemies in every way possible – beating defenses with preposterous mailbox throws, tap-dancing in the pocket to buy that extra 0.6 seconds for a downfield bomb to open up, scrambling to make a 7-yard sack into 1st and 10, and generally ending games by halfway through the 3rd quarter. You know you got a great one when the biggest criticism of Maye is his very 23-year-old belief that (hopefully you’ve seen The Nice Guys) “I don’t think I can die!”
Best Offensive Player: It’s probably Drake again, but I’m assuming the intention is like Offensive Player of the Year and this is a de facto non-QB award, so let’s give it to Stefon Diggs simply because the Patriots don’t beat the world-destroying Bills without him. Period. Did Diggs bring a little something extra to that game? Of course he did! That’s what you sign superstars to do, and the Patriots haven’t had a game-breaker like that since prime (healthy) Gronk. Also, how about the allegedly mercurial malcontent Distraction™ Stefon Diggs morphing overnight into a do-your-job, F-the-stats-I’m-here-for-wins role model?
Best Defensive Player: I’ll go with Milton Williams, although Harold Landry consistently being a menace off the edge has been extremely fun to watch. Coming in, Milton Williams was a lot of projection; he was a rotational player in Philly, coming off a hot streak on a stacked team at exactly the right time, and if you remember, he almost signed with the Panthers before the Patriots one-upped Carolina and sealed the deal. And now that he’s playing 65% of the defensive snaps, Williams and Barmore have combined to man the middle of the league’s best rushing defense that
still has yet to allow a 50-yard rusher.
Best Rookie: Will Campbell, although to be honest that says more about the rest of the class falling into the category of “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed”. Still, Campbell’s been mostly very good, with more than a few tape dorks commenting that he’s done well combining his athleticism with the kind of chess-match savvy you can only get with 3 starting years of SEC ball. Meanwhile, most of rest of the class of ’25…..what are we doing here?
Best Free Agency Signing: It’s Stefon Diggs again. Here’s more Diggs fun facts for you: in advanced stats-land, he’s comfortably achieving his highest receiving success rate
and catch percentage of his career, on some of the highest yards per target of his career, and he’s doing all this while still being on a pitch count and only playing 55% of snaps. Imagine what he’ll be able to do when Josh really turns him loose down the stretch.
Best Coach: This is where I have to hold a big fat L and admit that Josh McDaniels has absolutely killed it. I was convinced that he was just going to trot out the same ol’, same ol’ that Brady liked, and to his credit he’s added a whole bunch of new tricks to his bag and, most impressively, gotten a whole offense with significant numbers of rookies, young bucks, and free agents to play together like a symphony. Even his classic Josh McDaniels Bullshit is working, because the players are executing it and the play-calling (mostly) fits the situations. That’s freakin’ coaching.
Biggest Surprise: This may be cheating but I’m going to go with “how the wide receiver rotation has actually worked out vs how we were bashing our heads in trying to project all summer”. First, the positives – Kayshon Boutte has built himself into a deadly deep threat despite his oft-mentioned lack of burner speed, Pop Douglas is settling in nicely after a rough first month of the season, Mack Hollins has been the definition of reliable whether he’s getting 3 targets or 10, and you’re probably tired of my Stefon Diggs fanboying by now. Unfortunately, success has come at the cost of releasing all-time vibes guy Kendrick Bourne, hitting the Eject button and trading 2024 37th overall pick Ja’Lynn Polk, and Kyle Williams seems to be stuck in either gadget plays or looking back at Drake after the ball goes somewhere other than where he is. Not what you want from a top-100 pick! But, as they say, there’s a lot of football left.
Best Game: Only one choice here. Defeating the Buffalo Bills in their own house without gadgets or Hoth weather and when they weren’t purposefully throwing the game was an exorcism.
Now, it’s your turn: Who do you think deserves some Patriots midseason awards? Please scroll down to the comment section below to share your answers, thoughts, and more.
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