New England Patriots in Orchard Park tickets

The New England Patriots began in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the eighth and final charter franchise of the American Football League. The name came out of a public contest and honors the colonists who declared American independence during the Revolutionary War, a natural fit for the region where so much of that history unfolded. Boston Globe artist Phil Bissell drew the original Pat Patriot logo, a minuteman hiking a football, that first winter. The early team bounced among four Boston home fields, including a six-season run sharing Fenway Park with the Boston Red Sox, before moving to Foxborough in 1971 and rebranding as the New England Patriots to represent the entire region.

The franchise's fortunes turned when Robert Kraft, a Boston paper executive who had held Patriots season tickets since 1971, purchased the team in 1994. In the 2001 season, a sixth-round draft pick named Tom Brady took over at quarterback and delivered the franchise's first Super Bowl title, launching the Brady-Belichick era. From 2001 through 2019, Brady and head coach Bill Belichick reached nine Super Bowls and won six, a stretch widely regarded as one of the greatest dynasties in sports. The run set NFL records along the way, including the only undefeated 16-game regular season in 2007, 11 consecutive division titles from 2009 through 2019, 19 straight winning seasons, and a 25-point comeback in Super Bowl LI, the largest in Super Bowl history.

A Patriots game day at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, roughly 22 miles southwest of Boston, comes with its own traditions. The End Zone Militia, a corps of Revolutionary War reenactors founded in 1996, fires musket volleys after every Patriots score, from touchdowns to extra points. The franchise has sold out every home game since 1994, which tells you plenty about how New England treats its Patriots tickets. The fanbase stretches across New England into Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Division battles against the New York Jets, Miami Dolphins, and Buffalo Bills date to the 1960s and bring an extra edge to the building. Just outside the stadium at Patriot Place, the Patriots Hall of Fame preserves six decades of franchise history, from AFL MVP Jim Nance to Tom Brady, whose number 12 was retired in 2024.