It’s hard to imagine now, after six Super Bowl titles and two decades atop the NFL, but for most of their existence the New England Patriots were awful.
The team didn’t have a permanent home for its first decade, and then left Boston in 1971 for the wind-swept Schaefer Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The owners fought and sank into debt. Brief moments of success, including two Super Bowl appearances last century, were punctuated by years of losing.
The fortunes of the franchise began to change in 1994 when Robert Kraft, a local businessman and long-time Patriots season ticket holder, bought the team. His first years in charge were rocky, but in 2000, he hired Bill Belichick, a coach who doubled as a de facto general manager and chose quarterback Tom Brady in the sixth round of the draft.