It’s not often that a crowd of 35,000 fans gathers together at a football stadium where there’s no football being played.
That’s exactly what happened on Sunday though, as the New England Patriots held a free send-off rally at Gillette Stadium before departing for the airport. The attendance dwarfed last year’s rally turnout, which was held on a Monday. Moving the event to the weekend ended up being a stroke of brilliance for the organizers, as the crowd on hand had to be larger than anyone could have expected or hoped for.
The highlight speakers were Robert and Jonathan Kraft, Bill Belichick, and of course Tom Brady, who led fans in a rousing unified chant of “We’re still here, we’re still here,” before passing the mic off.