Here’s what makes calling a game in Foxborough special, according to NBC’s Sunday Night Football crew
"The booth is actually close enough to the fans where you don’t have to guess what they think about you on occasion."
For Cris Collinsworth, a visit to Gillette Stadium evokes so many amazing memories that’s he has come to “expect greatness.”
“We’ve seen so many unbelievable games there,” Collinsworth, the color commentator for NBC’s Sunday Night Football, said on a conference call this week.
It doesn’t take that long a memory.
The New England Patriots are set to play the Green Bay Packers in another highly anticipated matchup of quarterbacks — this time between Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers — Sunday night in Foxborough. But the team was also featured in the primetime slot just three weeks earlier against the Kansas City Chiefs, a high-scoring shootout that more than delivered on its hype.
Collinsworth, however, also remembers being at Gillette Stadium one night for Colin Kaepernick’s breakout, four-touchdown game — and the Patriots’ near comeback — in 2012. He was also there for many memorable Sunday night duels between Brady and Peyton Manning.
“It almost seems like every time they shoot off the muskets, I’m reminded of not just the play that just happened, but of something else great that I’ve seen in that stadium,” Collinsworth said.
The former Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver-turned-broadcaster has also come to enjoy the interplay with Patriots fans that necessarily comes with calling a game at Gillette Stadium.
“The booth is actually close enough to the fans where you don’t have to guess what they think about you on occasion,” he said, laughing. “I’ve had a few fun interactions over the years.”
Fred Gaudelli, the longtime executive producer of Sunday Night Football, also said the Patriots’ “passionate” fans are one of the things that sticks out about Gillette. Another, from a more technical side, is the 16-year-old stadium’s infrastructure.
“The great thing about Gillette is it’s a fairly new stadium that they seem to make improvements on every single year,” Gaudelli said. “So from a broadcast technical standpoint, it has everything that you want.”
Taking note of the dry, 50-degree forecast, Gaudelli expressed excitement for nearly “perfect football weather.”
“It’s always great to go to Foxborough,” he said.
Interestingly, for both legendary play-by-play announcer Al Michaels and sideline reporter Michele Tafoya, the first thing that came to mind about visiting Foxborough wasn’t anything inside the stadium confines. Rather, it was the nostalgia of arriving at Gillette Stadium via residential back roads with retired broadcaster John Madden on his iconic bus, the “Madden Cruiser,” (the original version of which was recently donated to the Pro Football Hall of Fame).
“We don’t come in on the main entrance,” Michaels said. “We come in through the neighborhood through the back door of Gillette. … It’s always bucolic. You got pumpkins and all the rest from Halloween out there, the foliage.”
As opposed to most other NFL stadiums, located in cities or surrounded by vast open parking lots and viewable from miles away, Gillette Stadium is almost a surprise amid its pastoral New England backdrop.
“Here we are in this neighborhood,” Michaels said. “You’ve got the houses. You’ve got signs up for parking. People are walking to the game, and you look like you’re in the middle of the country. And all of a sudden, as John once said, a stadium pops up.”
Tafoya remembered during her first time coming to Gillette Stadium with Madden in the Madden Cruiser she remarked that it was a “really pretty approach.”
“And Madden looked at me, and said, ‘Approach?'” Tafoya recalled.
“And I said, ‘Yes, it’s a beautiful approach,'” she continued. “John made fun of me for saying that, and I always remember that. But it is.”
