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The Seahawks’ Sunday night win at the Patriots was a pretty excellent game between two of the NFL’s best, but Seattle coach Pete Carroll is wondering why it felt like a preseason crowd.


On the radio with 710 ESPN Seattle, Carroll was asked how he’d describe the atmosphere in Foxboro, and he settled on “okay.”

“It’s not a great place. They weren’t nuts. It’s because they’re so used to winning. There was a time when they kicked their last field goal to go ahead, and it was like a round of applause for the nice effort. Gosh, our guys would be going berserk.”


Carroll’s right in that winning tends to have a dampening effect on regular-season crowds. The Patriots are going to the playoffs—again—and anything short of a very deep run would be a failure—again—so it’s tough for their fans to get too emotionally invested in an early-November game.

Winning also makes things expensive. The Patriots have the second-highest average ticket price, and also the second-highest on the secondary market. The Venn diagram of “fans who like to drink six beers and holler their heads off” and “people who can afford to go to a Patriots game” doesn’t have the largest overlap.

Anyway, shut the hell up, Pete: No one wants to hear about how good Seahawks fans are.