Matt Robinson lives in Vacaville, California, about halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. It’s the last place you’d expect to find someone rocking a navy blue Patriots jersey.
But Robinson’s family is originally from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He’d spend summers in New England and has made it out to Patriots training camp. The team helped keep him close to his roots. So having the Pats make what’s been a stunning run to Super Bowl LX, right in his backyard, has been a thrill. Even if the tickets for the game are a little too pricey.
“Starting from last place last year to now, I think with Drake Maye starting quarterback his whole season, and then just adding a couple of weapons, you know, and a new coach all in the mix just kind of come together, [it’s] something special,” he said outside the Super Bowl Experience in downtown San Francisco.
Robinson is part of the contingent of Pats fans in the Bay Area to cheer on the team as they get ready to take on the Seattle Seahawks. And with a chance to secure the team’s seventh Lombardi Trophy, it’s no surprise that folks from all over are in town wearing the Pats colors.
Tony Espy from Somerville is attending his fourth Super Bowl. The last one he was at was Super Bowl LI, the famous 28-3 game against the Atlanta Falcons.
“And at that Super Bowl, I literally said to myself, ‘I don’t need to go to another Super Bowl, because it was the greatest ever,’” Espy said. “But I’m back.”
Like just about everyone, he couldn’t have imagined the Patriots making it this far when the season began. He would have been happy just to see them go over .500.
“My local fish market, the guy that runs it, he was like, ‘They’re going to the playoffs!’ I’m like, ‘Easy, easy, let’s just win more than four games,’” Espy said. “And so it’s just nuts that we’re here.”
Espy may have had a long trip to California, but not as long as Vanessa Bachert. She’s a Pats loyalist from Germany. She flew 12 hours to be here.
She said the team has a large following back in Deutschland.
“I’m in the GoPatsCrew. It’s from Germany, Switzerland and Austria,” Bachert said.
Not everyone in town is rooting for the Pats, of course. For Seahawks fans like Christian Hill, this is a rematch of Super Bowl XLIX in Arizona, when Malcolm Butler made an all-time interception on the goal line the win game for New England, crushing the hearts of the Seahawks faithful like Hill in the process.
Hill said he was watching at a bar near the stadium that game and headed over to celebrate when he thought the Seahawks were on the verge of winning.
“All I know is from outside the stadium we could hear the stadium go silent, so it was deafening,” Hill said. “And then all the Ubers just started leaving like a bomb went off and they were going to pick up their passengers. And I was yelling at ‘em like, ‘What just happened?’ And then we found out the interception happened. So it was devastating.”
The fact that Seattle is looking to avenge that defeat at Levi’s Stadium, the home field of the San Francisco 49ers, may forge an unlikely alliance on Sunday.
If the Pats win, they’ll have two more Super Bowl championships than the Niners currently claim. But the Seahawks are in the NFC West and are bitter division rivals to San Francisco.
So even if some fans will cheer against the Patriots no matter what, a byproduct of some bitterness left over from the Belichick-Brady era, Matt Robinson thinks Niners fans will be rooting for New England.
And against this Seattle team, the Pats may need all the help they can get.
“Seattle looks strong, so it’s gonna be a tough game, but I feel like if they can protect Drake [Maye], just give him a little bit of time in the pocket and just get the ball out, hopefully it will work,” Robinson said.
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This story was originally published by GBH. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
