Gillette Stadium was less than half full at kickoff for Sunday’s NFL game between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Chargers. Nobody wanted to watch two bad teams play on a cold, rainy day in Massachusetts.
Temperatures hovered around 45 degrees with a steady drizzle throughout the morning. It was much easier for fans to stay home and throw the game on T.V. than it was to trek out to Foxborough, which is completely fair. However, rarely — if ever — has a crowd been so sparse in the last two decades.
Gillette Stadium is less than half full at kickoff on a rainy day. pic.twitter.com/pYV50IYalP
— Chad Graff (@ChadGraff) December 3, 2023
The Patriots draw more fans to preseason games than they did on Sunday. It was grim.
Such low attendance could be expected, considering that both teams are sub-.500. Bostonians don’t want to pay money to drive an hour or hop on a train and watch their team try to grind out a win in a game that would actually serve them better long-term to lose. (NFL Draft)
Even still, Robert Kraft must have been abhorred by the lack of butts in the seats. Especially after being flexed out of Monday Night Football! Neither of those things happen in New England. That’s not the standard that has been set. That’s not the ‘Patriot Way.’
To make matters even worse, nobody knew the plan at quarterback going into the game. There was no reason to get excited about any of the three options.
Mac Jones was relegated to third-string. Bailey Zappe got the start, but his odds of being the long-term solution at the position are slim.
Malik Cunningham doesn’t have enough juice to get fans excited about watching their future franchise signal-caller. He is fun, yes. There is no way that he will be the starter.
All of this goes to say that Patriots fans didn’t care on Sunday.