🔥 HOT NEWS: The Patriots’ Locker Room Has a Secret Weapon—and It Smells Like Fresh Baking ⚡.DH

From the outside, it looks harmless. Cute, even.

Homemade cookies. Banana bread. A little sea salt on top. The kind of thing that plays well on social media and fits neatly into the growing legend of Ann Michael Maye, the Patriots’ unofficial team baker and wife of franchise quarterback Drake Maye.

But inside the New England locker room, those baked goods are being viewed a little differently.

According to backup quarterback Tommy DeVito, there’s strategy baked into every batch.

“She’ll always send Drake into the building with stuff,” DeVito told PEOPLE ahead of the Super Bowl. “So when we’re in the [offensive linemen’s] room, we’ll dabble a little bit.”

That detail matters. Because the treats don’t circulate equally.

And that, DeVito suggests, is the point.

The Patriots’ quarterbacks—Drake Maye included—are intentionally keeping their diets clean during the playoff push.

The offensive linemen, meanwhile, are the ones getting the full benefit of Ann Michael’s baking. Cookies, breads, and whatever else comes out of her kitchen end up where protection is built.

“I think we’re trying to stay cleaner on our diet,” DeVito explained. “The O-line are the ones that are making sure that everybody in that room stays upright, so I don’t blame her for that.”

It’s half joke, half truth. And quietly revealing.

In a sport where chemistry is everything and marginal gains matter, food has become a connector—one that reinforces roles without saying a word.

The quarterbacks resist temptation. The linemen feel appreciated. The room stays light.

And the message is subtle but clear: everyone has a job to do.

Ann Michael Maye’s rise as a fan favorite has been impossible to miss this season. Her viral baking clips, TikTok success, and show Beyond Bakemas have made her a familiar presence well beyond Foxborough.

But inside the building, her influence feels more grounded than performative.

DeVito, for one, isn’t pretending he’s immune.

“I’m sort of a cookie fanatic,” he admitted. “Chocolate chip, plain, straight up. She put some sea salt on it… so it was good for me.”

He laughed, but the tone was telling. In the pressure cooker of a Super Bowl run, those moments of normalcy—of indulgence just out of reach—help keep things balanced.

And balance is something the Patriots have leaned on all season.

While the baking makes headlines, DeVito himself has embraced a quieter role. Now New England’s third-string quarterback, he understands what it means to be ready without expecting spotlight.

He’s been there before—famously stepping in and winning games as a New York Giants quarterback in 2023.

That perspective matters now more than ever.

DeVito recently took part in a bizarre—but telling—moment after the Patriots clinched the AFC title, helping a fantasy football loser run a lemonade stand in freezing Boston weather as punishment. It was absurd. Cold. And oddly perfect.

“It was like five-degree weather,” he recalled. “People were looking at us crazy.”

But it spoke to the larger theme of the season: togetherness, even when it’s uncomfortable.

As the Patriots prepare to face the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl, the focus remains where it should—on execution, health, and belief. DeVito says the locker room feels ready.

“We truly believe that we are going to go in and win every game,” he said. “I think we’re peaking at the right time.”

And somewhere in the background, a batch of cookies is being passed around—not to the quarterbacks, not to the cameras, but to the men whose job it is to keep Drake Maye standing.

It’s not a play in the playbook.

But it might be part of why everything else is working.