On the sunny late September day Matt Light was enshrined in the Patriots Hall of Fame in Foxboro, the former offensive tackle seemed to speak for many Patriots of a certain vintage when he acknowledged his utter bafflement upon being drafted by New England in 2001’s second round.
“I hate to admit this, I had no idea where I was actually headed to,’’ Light said, moments after delivering his Hall induction speech. “I looked over at my friend and I said, ‘Hey, where is New England?’ He said ‘You’re going to fly into Boston, man. You’re going to the Patriots, right?’ I’m like, ‘All right, yeah, I’m in.’’’
Advertisement
It may sound far-fetched today, but Light’s reaction was far from unique for newly christened Patriots players back in the day, before the string of Super Bowl appearances and ring ceremonies, the transformative 2002 opening of Gillette Stadium and the subsequent construction of the sprawling Patriot Place commercial complex. For those Patriots who played in and experienced the spartan, bare-bones structure known as Foxboro Stadium, nothing will ever compare.
Back then, first-time visitors to the remote and rustic setting of Foxboro didn’t always believe they had in fact made it to the NFL and the big time. While so many ex-Patriots have come to appreciate and respect Foxboro for its relaxed and rural pace, putting down roots in the area to work, raise their families and stay close to the team long after their careers ended, the charms of living a small-town life in and around Route 1 were not immediately discernible for most.
“It was basically the same experience we all had, and we sometimes wondered if we were even in the NFL,’’ said Troy Brown, who arrived as New England’s eighth-round pick in 1993 out of Marshall and wound up playing his entire 15-year career with the Patriots, finishing as the club’s all-time leading receiver. “I wondered where I was, because here I am thinking I’m going to the big city and going to play in the NFL, but once they fly you into Boston they put you in a van and drive through the city and head the other way. All the way out to Foxboro.
“And at the time I came to Foxboro, it looked nothing like it looks now. Route 1 was still a very rural setting. They took us to the End Zone Motor Lodge (across the street from the stadium), and you’d be sitting there thinking to yourself, ‘Am I really entering the NFL? What’s going on here? This has got to be a joke.’ Guys today would have no idea when they saw the End Zone Motor Lodge. It was like a trucker motel, and those truckers brought prostitutes and stuff in and out of there at times.’’
Advertisement
Like so many others, Brown stayed and still lives in Foxboro with his family of four, and works in the Boston-area media while remaining close to the franchise. The Patriots’ dynastic success in the era of Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady has definitively put Foxboro on the map, but those who pre-dated the team’s glory era these past 18 years have a perspective of the humbling origins that came before it.
“It’s night and day different,’’ said Scott Zolak, the former Patriots quarterback who arrived in the fourth round of the 1991 draft and now serves as the team’s popular radio color analyst after an eight-year playing career with the team. “When you’re coming out of college you had no clue where the hell Foxboro is. You just thought, ‘OK, it’s Boston. I’m going to Boston.’ ’’
Not exactly. The 30 miles that separate Boston’s Logan Airport from Foxboro might as well have been 300 miles in the eyes of a 23-year-old Zolak, coming from the University of Maryland.
“The night I got here after the draft, it’s a Friday night at Logan, and it’s late April, so it’s cold, rainy and sleeting,’’ Zolak recalls. “I get picked up in this old white van and it literally took two and a half hours to get to Foxboro, that’s how bad the weather was. It felt like eight hours on that drive, and it’s pitch black out there and as a kid you have no idea where you’re going.
“They finally get me to Foxboro and the driver goes past the stadium, and he says ‘There’s the stadium right there,’ and you’re trying to look through the fog to see it. He says he’s taking me to my hotel and it was the fucking End Zone Motor Lodge. That’s where they put everybody when you were new. I was in a suite with a walk-in hot tub right in the middle of the room. It smelled like chlorine, and it was weird man. You’re basically stuck in the middle of the woods out there, and we were left to figure it out ourselves.’’
In his second year, Zolak escaped the dreaded End Zone Motor Lodge and bought a condo in nearby Franklin, east of Foxboro. Eventually teammates Ty Law and Tom Brady both ended up living in that same unit at different times, passing it down from Patriot to Patriot like it was a precious family heirloom.
Advertisement
“There were no rentals like there are now up and down Route 1,’’ Zolak said. “These kids that come in now, they think, ‘Oh, this is great. This is the league.’ Nah, that wasn’t the league when I got here. You were at the End Zone.’’
Law was the team’s first-round pick out of Michigan in 1995, and in his second season the Patriots would lose the Super Bowl under coach Bill Parcells. But Law too did a stint at the End Zone, and seeing Foxboro for the first time was a rite of initiation he’ll never forget.
“Once you got drafted, you thought you had made it, but I didn’t know where New England was exactly located myself when the Patriots picked me,’’ Law said. “Being in the pros, you assumed you were coming to a high-end stadium and team complex, but then you got that reality check and found out it was one of the oldest and one of the worst stadiums in the league. It was a culture shock, especially when you’ve got a couple dollars about to go in your pocket.
“And the End Zone was brutal. I would have happily took the Marriott at that point. But I ended up staying there and living there for the first couple months. Then I bought Scott’s townhouse and Brady eventually bought it from me.’’
The memories of those early days in Foxboro stick with former Patriots players, who wear them like badges of honor. Brown recalls the smell of “horse crap’’ that permeated the parking lot every day at Foxboro Stadium, which for years was right next to the active Foxboro Park harness racing track and stables. Having to be driven to the team’s nearby practice field in Foxboro — heading for practice “with our equipment on like a bunch of little kids,’’ he said — reminded Law of playing Little League or high school football again.
And when linebacker Matt Chatham was cut by the Rams late in the preseason of 2000, he went from the working in the posh and new glass-building team facility the club operated in suburban St. Louis to the stark contrast that was Foxboro Stadium and its environs. One night he was staying at an upscale hotel in a picturesque spot near the water at Logan Airport, and the next morning he was whisked away to the south and introduced to antiquated Foxboro Stadium and the well-worn End Zone Motor Lodge.
“At the Rams training facility everything was just comfortable and nice and new with wood paneling everywhere,’’ Chatham said. “And then you arrive in Foxboro and we had folding chairs to sit on and partitions dividing the meeting rooms. It just kind of had a small-college feel, almost.
Advertisement
“And the End Zone motel, the walls were really thin, so you could hear conversations in the room next to you and you could also hear the bar down below. It got pretty crazy on Thursday and Friday late nights, and if you were studying your playbook, you kind of had the mindset of ‘Where the hell am I? This doesn’t feel like the NFL’ type of thing.’’
The End Zone had one thing going for it, besides its proximity to the stadium, Brown recalls. “They had the the End Zone Lounge, where they had post-game parties,’’ he said. “People just showing up and hanging out and playing music. And they had some pretty good wings in the kitchen. Other than that, man, that place was an absolute dump. The whole thing was quite a wake-up call that this NFL thing might not be exactly what it’s cracked up to be.’’
A big, open concrete bowl of a stadium that opened in 1971, after a low-budget construction cost of $7.1 million, Foxboro Stadium (previously Schaefer Stadium and Sullivan Stadium) seated 60,000-plus for football and wasn’t exactly known for its amenities. Players sat on long aluminum benches that ran in front of their lockers, the field had a reputation as one of league’s worst with or without artificial turf, and former Patriots linebackers coach Pepper Johnson was known to have individually named the rats that frequented the downstairs locker room at night.
But when the winning began in 2001, the season of the Patriots’ first Super Bowl victory, rapid changes started. The team finally stopped housing players at the End Zone Motor Lodge and started using a Marriott Residence Inn in Foxboro. Gillette Stadium opened in 2002 and ended the annoyance of having to drive to practice, or conduct training camp remotely. And players started to quickly realize the benefits and opportunities that attached themselves to Patriots players who had the sheen and luster of a newly minted Super Bowl champion.
I can recall former Patriots director of player personnel Scott Pioli telling me years ago how the team started to find players were willing to play the long game in order to stay with the organization, perhaps giving up some short-term dollars in their contract negotiations in recognition of there being future value in securing their place on the roster. (Thus, the so-called hometown discount deals). What once was a liability — life in Foxboro as a Patriot — turned into an obvious benefit for both the team and player with a dynasty in progress.
Once Gillette Stadium opened and eventually Patriot Place was built, with those three Super Bowl titles won between 2001 and 2004, it became something of a self-perpetuating perfect storm of success that helped begat further success. Players wanted to stay and be a part of the community and at least in proximity of the winning New England program. Many joined the media in their post-playing career, and settled in an area they once considered the hinterlands.
“A lot of guys stayed and I’m one of them,’’ said Brown, who retired after the 2007 season. “A lot of kids were born here, because of the reputation in Massachusetts of having great schools. So you stayed, put your kids in school here and they got a great education. That was part of the attraction, plus the team was continuing to win. There’s always a lot of excitement about the Patriots. I’ve been done playing for 11 years and I’ve still got a pretty good following around here. Life is good, man. That’s where coming from a winning organization helps.’’
Advertisement
Like Zolak, Chatham lives in Wrentham, and they’re two of about 30-plus Patriots alumni members who live locally and regularly show up for many of the same events. Once ridiculed for its middle-of-nowhere feel, Foxboro today for many represents the ties that bind.
“A lot of guys find this to be a decent spot,’’ said Chatham, who is an NFL/Patriots analyst for NESN and The Athletic, among other outlets. “The appeal of here is pretty high, with good school districts and a slower pace of life away from the city.’’
With Patriot Place five minutes from his house, Zolak said he and his family rarely head for Boston or Providence and a taste of city life.
“We’ve got Davio’s right there now if we’re trying to find a good steak,’’ he said. “We never leave the area because of what they’ve built up around that stadium. Everything’s there. It’s different than it was when I first got here, but even back then we found a way to make it work. And going through that gave us an appreciation to stay here, and for at least some of us, we made this our own.’’
(Top photo: Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe via Getty Images)