The New England Patriots, commonly called the "Pats", are a professional football team based in the Greater Boston wholesale Toronto Maple Leafs snapback playing their home games in the town of Foxborough, Massachusetts at Gillette Stadium.
The team is part of the East Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The team changed its name from the original Boston Patriots after relocating to Foxborough in 1971, although Foxborough is a suburb of Boston, 22 miles (35 km) away.
An original member of the American Football League (AFL), the Patriots joined the NFL in the 1970 merger of those leagues. The team advanced to the playoffs four times before appearing in Super Bowl XX in January 1986, losing to the Chicago Bears. The team also appeared in Super Bowl XXXI in January 1997, losing to the Green Bay Packers.
Between 2001 and 2005, the Patriots became the second team in NFL history (after the Dallas Cowboys) to win three Super Bowls in four years (Super Bowl XXXVI, XXXVIII, and XXXIX), and the eighth to win consecutive Super Bowls. The Patriots, however, were defeated by the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII, after winning the first 18 games of their 2007 season.
Under quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick, the Patriots have also compiled the longest winning streak consisting of regular season and playoff games in NFL history, a 21-game streak from October 2003 October 2004.
The Patriots NFL Cheerleaders are simply known as The Patriots Cheerleaders. In 2005, cheerleader Kristin Gauvin won Miss Massachusetts, in part from her local commitment with the Patriots.The Patriots' mascot is Pat Patriot, a revolutionary minuteman wearing a Patriots home jersey.
During each game, about 10 men dressed as minutemen line the back of each end zone. When the Patriots score a touchdown or field goal, the militia behind the opposite end zone fire a round of blanks from flintlock muskets. After the point-after-touchdown (PAT) attempt, the men fire their guns. ESPN named this one of the top ten celebrations in the league in 2007.
The Patriots' flagship radio station is WBZ-FM 98.5 FM, owned by CBS wholesale Jacksonville Jaguars snapback The larger radio network is called the New England Patriots Radio Network, whose 37 affiliate stations span 7 states. Gil Santos and Gino Cappelletti are the longtime announcing team.
Any preseason games not on national television are shown on CBS affiliate WBZ-TV. These games were broadcast on ABC affiliate WCVB-TV from 1995 until the change to WBZ in 2009. Don Criqui has been the play-by-play announcer the last several years, with Randy Cross as a color commentator and Mike Lynch as a sideline reporter. Lynch was replaced by WBZ reporter Steve Burton in 2009.
Since 2002, the Patriots' home stadium has been Gillette Stadium, a $350 million facility privately financed by Kraft. It houses all administrative offices for the team and its owning entity, The Kraft Group, as well as the Kraft-owned Major League Soccer team, the New England Revolution.
The field, which was originally natural grass, was replaced with a FieldTurf surface during the 2006 season. The area around the stadium was developed, beginning in 2007, into a $375 million "lifestyle and entertainment center" called Patriot Place.
Prior to 2002, the Patriots played in Foxboro Stadium dating back to 1971, the team's second year in the NFL after the AFL-NFL merger. During the team's days in the American Football League, the Boston Patriots were hosted by a number of fields in or around Boston.
Under head coach Bill Belichick, the Patriots have employed specific on-field and off-field strategies. On the field, the Patriots have typically utilized an "Erhardt-Perkins" offense and a "Fairbanks-Bullough" 3-4 defense, referred to commonly as a 2-gap 3-4 defensive system.
Their philosophy in making personnel decisions and in game planning has focused on the "team" concept, stressing preparation, strong work ethic, versatility,and lack of individual ego.This approach, which led to three Super Bowl victories under Belichick, was analyzed in the 2004 book Patriot Reign.
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When owner Robert Kraft purchased the team in 1994, he did so for $175 million. Since then, the Patriots have sold out every home game in both Foxboro Stadium and Gillette Stadium. By 2009, the value of the franchise had increased by over $1 billion, to a Forbes Magazine estimated value of $1.361 billion, third highest in the NFL.