Coach Bill Belichick said Monday he had never seen anything quite like the “sea of fans” that supported the Patriots on Sunday night at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, more than 2,500 miles away from home.

“They were just all kind of in the same spot [behind the Patriots' bench], it was almost like a college game in a neutral site, where one side of the field is one team and the other side is the other team,” Belichick said in a conference call with reporters. “It wasn’t quite like that, but we had all those fans right behind us. They were loud and vocal.”

Quarterback Tom Brady noticed it, too.

“I ran out for pregame warm-ups and everyone was going crazy,” Brady said in an interview Monday morning on Boston sports radio station WEEI. “I couldn’t believe it with all the fans that were right behind our bench. Just throughout the game we would make big plays on defense or offense and the crowd would just be going crazy. The way our fans supported us and traveled out there to make that trip, it was really neat. It was pretty cool. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

The crowd noise even threw Belichick off when he heard loud cheers from the crowd that were actually for his team.

“There were a couple times when I was talking to somebody or talking to one coach or another while the other side of the ball was out there and you hear the fans start yelling and [you’re] like, ‘Uh oh, what happened?’” Belichick said. “And it was us making a good play and our fans cheering.

“It was a little bit of a different sensation. But the crowd was -- it was an electric night. The crowd had a lot of energy.”

The Patriots had fan support the entire week in San Diego as the team opted to hold practices there instead of coming home after the road game against the Packers.

“The support and the fans that we had at the game and all of them there behind us was awesome,” Belichick said. “It was great.”