Though the Patriots haven’t played in the Super Bowl since 2019, there are connections to New England during LVII.

During the 2023 NFL regular season, the New England Patriots will get a good look at both the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs when they host both at Gillette Stadium.

Though it’s a little early to be scouting, the Pats do have “connections” worthy of watching in Sunday’s Super Bowl LVII.

At the same stadium in Glendale, Arizona in which New England lost XLII to the Giants (grumble, David Tyree) and beat the Seahawks in XLIX (thank you, Malcolm Butler), they will today only be spectators as one of their former players vows for a ring.

The only player among the Chiefs and Eagles will be one of the men assigned to protect Patrick Mahomes … Kansas City starting offensive lineman Joe Thuney. The left guard entered the league as a third-round draft pick by the Patriots in 2016 and played in their two most recent Super Bowls. Thuney started 90 games in New England.

The other LVII connections to the Pats are also to the Chiefs:

Brendan Daily (linebackers coach who won three Super Bowls as New England defensive assistant), Jonathan Howard (former scouting assistant in Foxboro now in Kansas City’s college scouting group) and Rick Burkholder (a former Pats’ intern now the Chiefs’ vice president of sports medicine).

For fans of an organization that has recent memories of winning six championships, it’s certainly not the same pizzazz this Sunday. But the connections to the AFC champion Chiefs might be enough to sway otherwise neutral rooting interests.