Patriots now have room for 11 Super Bowl banners at Gillette Stadium
Robert Kraft had to go back to the drawing board after he ran out of room for his championship banners
By
Will Brinson
•
2 min read
The Patriots ran into a problem this offseason. It was a good problem to have, because they ran out of room to put their championship banners in Gillette Stadium. Gillette opened in 2001 and New England quickly added a banner. Robert Kraft never dreamed he would have five titles in less than 20 years of the stadium being opened, but the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady combo just keeps on rolling.
The Patriots have fixed the glitch, though, by doing some construction this offseason to create room for the Super Bowl LI banner.
And according to Kraft, in a wide-ranging interview with Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald, the Patriots decided to just go ahead and make sure that there wouldn't be an issue with space for banners going forward. So, New England made room for 11 banners.
"It was a huge construction process and commitment that creates some other opportunities," Kraft said. "We'll see opening night. It's pretty cool."
Again: 11 banners. Which is hilarious in the same way that the Pats buying two giant 747 planes for traveling is hilarious -- it's the sort of excess that only the wealthiest NFL team (in terms of success) can afford.
Except it's not even that crazy. If you're Kraft and you need to plan for X more championships, are you going to make room for six total? That's just one extra banner. Eight is "only" three -- it would be silly to just make that kind of room when Brady is playing like an MVP at the age of 40 and Belichick continues to outwork everyone else in the NFL.
Both guys will eventually retire, but there might be another decade of coaching or more left in Belichick. He's sitting on Jimmy Garropolo as the next face of the franchise whenever Brady is ready to walk away. The roster is loaded for now, but it's also well situated for the next half decade or so.
The Patriots are by far and away the consensus favorite to win the Super Bowl this year -- five of our seven experts picked them to make the championship game, with three of those choosing the Pats to win it all.
The smart move is to do enough construction now so you don't have to do construction later. The worst-case scenario involves winning seven more championships and having to do some more construction on Gillette. Kraft would probably be OK with that happening.
