When hundreds of New England Patriots supporters set off from Frankfurt Central Station towards Deutsche Bank Park on Sunday morning, they were hopeful. “Let’s go Pats,” echoes through the S-Bahn stop. The track is full to bursting, four and a half hours before the game starts everyone wants to breathe in the NFL experience. Breathing would generally be nice, but there isn’t much space left on the train for that. “If someone unpacks Handkäs here, we’ll have room right away,” jokes a passenger.
The mood at Deutsche Bank Park is exuberant hours before the game starts. A large group of Patriots fans combine American sports with German football culture. A fan march takes place from the city towards the stadium, with an American marching band and several hundred participants.
The stadium itself is still quite quiet three hours before the game starts. There are only a few fans in the arena where the Patriots and Indianapolis Colts players are slowly arriving. Some wear headphones and a tracksuit, others wear sunglasses and gold chains – casual dress code for their first appearance in Germany.
The players return just a little later: as they warm up, the arena is full and celebrities can be seen. Former soccer star Claudio Pizarro is watching the action on the sidelines, as is comedian Mario Barth. The families of the Colts players are let into a cordoned off area; around 40 have made the journey to Germany. The NFL in Germany is not only an event here, but also for the players and their families. Above all, Bernhard Raimann. The 26-year-old Austrian plays for the Colts, for him it is almost a home game. Raimann runs through the end zone, smiling from ear to ear and waving to family and friends.
More celebrities gather at another corner of the field. David Alaba and Marcel Sabitzer are on the sidelines for the Patriots. This is Sabitzer’s second NFL game; last year he watched the German premiere in Munich. The atmosphere inspires the Borussia Dortmund midfielder. “The atmosphere cannot be compared to football. There is no rivalry between the fans, that’s nice to see. It’s more like a celebration.” He used to follow the NFL regularly and was a supporter of the Pittsburgh Steelers. “But that was back in Ben Roethlisberger’s time.” But now he is more of a neutral observer.
Meanwhile, memories of the Patriots’ glorious times are playing on the video cube – and they have one name in particular: Tom Brady. The official farewell will be shown, along with a ranking of the best game scenes from perhaps the best quarterback in NFL history. One wonders what Brady’s successor Mac Jones is thinking while warming up, he must have seen the scenes too. Perhaps they are a reminder of what is to come. Jones experiences a total disassembly in his first game on international soil.
The game starts promisingly for the Patriots, who quickly take the lead after a field goal, but the Colts respond directly with a touchdown – it will be the only one in this game.
It’s a strange mood that already sets in towards the end of the first quarter. New England is having massive problems getting the offense going – the many Patriots supporters in the audience are becoming restless. Quarterback Mac Jones and his attackers repeatedly have to leave the field after four attempts to attack. What the team from Massachusetts is offering seems unimaginative. Jones can’t find a passing point, it always goes through Ezekiel Elliott, who doesn’t gain much space with his running attempts. The stadium management counteracts the calm atmosphere, presenter MJ Acosta Ruiz asks the fans for help. Early on, Rod Stewart’s “Sweet Caroline” echoes through the arena, the 50,000 spectators jump on it, giving the first real goosebumps moment.
Otherwise, you only get goosebumps here because of the cold and the game, in which no more points are added to the scoreboard until the last quarter. The mood in the stadium remains reserved, but flares up when Myles Bryant intercepts a pass from Colts quarterback Gardner Minshew. And it quickly dies down when New England kicker Chad Ryland misses the field goal. The appearance of the stadium director again follows, who plays Journey’s classic “Don’t stop believing” – it has a bit of situational comedy. However, many of the fans now seem to have lost faith – the belief that the game will improve, the hope that the Patriots will win. The stadium management also saw this. John Denver’s “Country Roads” still comes on, but instead of fading out the music and giving the fans another moment of shared ecstasy, the song echoes through the stadium at full volume.
But what they are witnessing is the dismantling of Mac Jones. When the Patriots finally march across the field and are close to the end zone, the quarterback makes the mistake. A pass flies into the end zone, but no teammate is in sight, only Colts defender Julian Blackmon, who gratefully accepts the gift.
When the Patriots were allowed to take the offense back onto the field shortly afterwards, Jones was sitting on the bench. Coach Bill Belichick relies on substitute Bailey Zappe. Two minutes before the end, a touchdown is enough for the Patriots to win – there is no more loss of trust in the starting quarterback.
Zappe also delivers the first pass to the man, hope rises, shouts of “Zappe Zappe” ring out around the area. But as is so often the case in this game, hopes are quickly buried. Zappe’s seventh pass is also his last: It lands in the arms of Rodney Thomas II – only he plays for the Colts, game over, Indianapolis wins 10:6. For the first time the Patriots lose a game on international soil, for the first time they score fewer than 33 points, and for the first time the quarterback is not named Tom Brady.
And Mac Jones? This time he’s not appearing in front of the press, perhaps out of self-protection. “We’ll see what happens next week,” explains Belichick, tight-lipped and mumbling at the press conference. What happens next with Belichick will probably also be decided. Before the game, team owner Robert Kraft spoke on “NFL Network”, the league’s own broadcaster, of a “disappointing season” and said he had hoped for a better season. “I hope today is the opportunity for a fresh start to make the season significantly better. So far this is not what we expected,” explained Kraft. Confidence in Belichick is unlikely to have increased any further after the eighth defeat in ten games. Now the most successful coach in NFL history is also threatened with dismantling.
