Gillette Stadium Was Shockingly Empty For Patriots-Chargers Kickoff

The New England Patriots are down extremely bad this season and enter Week 13 with a 2-9 record. It's obviously been a long time since the Pats were "bad" by normal standards but it's been much worse than that this year-- it has been an unmitigated disaster in no uncertain terms. And there is little hope it'll get better with the team being forced to turn to Bailey Zappe this week after Mac Jones fell to pieces multiple games in a row.

They welcomed the Los Angeles Chargers to Gillette Stadium on Sunday afternoon and it would appear the bad football is finally getting to Patriots fans. The stands were half-empty for kickoff-- something we are not at all used to seeing in Foxborough.

In fairness, today is a recipe for low fan attendance. A rainy 1pm kickoff featuring two sub-.500 teams in an outdoor stadium doesn't tend to rally the fans. But the Pats are supposed to be immune to that sort of thing after two decades of unparalleled excellence. A game like this in the Tom Brady era would feel like a primetime showing no matter what time it was, and even in the immediate post-Brady years the fans turned out in force.

No longer. The organization has forced the fans into the worst state imaginable-- apathy. Nobody cares. Everybody is onto the Celtics and Bruins. The Patriots are nothing more than daytime sports radio fodder now.

The Kraft family is definitely aware of that and nothing proves it more than a half-empty stadium at kickoff. Between this and losing a Monday Night Football game after they got flexed out this week, the Patriots have gotten so bad they're costing the owners money. That is more untenable than any failure of football we've seen. Change is coming-- the question is only how drastic it will be.