After enduring 20 years of hype about the home team, victory parades and mass infatuation with the quarterback Tom Brady, the Patriots haters of New England believed, just a few years back, that they had finally won a respite.
Mr. Brady was gone. So was the longtime Patriots coach, Bill Belichick. And so it began: The Pats went 4-13 in 2023, and again the following year.
“It was so quiet,” Andrew Lawrenson, a Patriots hater in Nashua, N.H., wistfully recalled of that brief period. “You didn’t hear a whisper.”
Then came the 2025 season, and a comeback so abrupt — and so wildly premature, in the minds of the haters — that it felt surreal.
On Sunday, after going 14-3 in the regular season, the Patriots will play in the Super Bowl. Again. And quietly, across New England, a collective sigh is rising from the willful few who live in the region but root for other teams.
“It’s their time, so good for them,” said David Loxterkamp, a Green Bay Packers fan in Belfast, Maine, showing considerable restraint.
“Go Seahawks,” he added, unable to resist.
Elsewhere in the country, loathing for the Patriots is so common that the team’s fans have a ready refrain: They hate us ’cause they ain’t us.
Less discussed, but no less real, are the haters living side by side with the faithful in New England, like bystanders taken captive by a football cult. For them, there is no escape from the endless loop of playoff victory highlights, the live broadcasts this week from San Francisco, the giddy party planning by colleagues, friends and neighbors. They strain to stay silent, when there is so much to say.
The list of offenses by the Patriots, and their fans, is lengthy in the eyes of these pariahs. But nearly every list is topped by this: The team’s sustained success over two decades created a generation of entitled younger fans, who lack the grit and character that can only come from years of crushing failure.
“There’s a complacency to Patriots fans, like they expect to be back here. Like, ‘Now we’re back to normal,’” said Beth Arnold, another Packers fan in Belfast, Maine.
Growing up in Wisconsin, Ms. Arnold had a different experience: “Years and years of sitting on the couch next to my dad, and staying there until the end, no matter how many weeks we kept losing.”
In New England, the vibe is more “Entitledtown” than “Titletown,” she quipped.
On top of that, there was the affront of the Patriots’ regular season schedule this year, derided by critics as a gift because they often played weak teams.
“You’re not warriors,” Mr. Lawrenson, a die-hard Miami Dolphins fan who grew up in Lowell, Mass., advised Patriots fans in one of many trash-talking videos he posted on his Facebook page this week. “You’ve had the easiest regular season schedule in the history of the N.F.L.”
To Pats fans, taunts from fellow New Englanders are like a creepy phone call in a horror movie, coming from inside the house. Some, like Mr. Lawrenson’s 90-year-old grandmother, don’t hesitate to punch back.
“She called me the second the A.F.C. Championship ended and said, ‘I told you so,’” Mr. Lawrenson recalled, adding that his grandmother proceeded to mock his Facebook videos.
For some liberal-leaning New Englanders, there is no getting past the friendship between Robert K. Kraft, who owns the Patriots, and President Trump. The two men sat side by side at the premiere of “Melania,” the new film about the first lady, last week in New York.
This week, Mr. Kraft was denied entry to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, falling short of the votes needed for admission. The same fate befell Mr. Belichick recently, stirring memories of the team’s “Spygate” and “Deflategate” cheating scandals and considerable outrage from New England fans.
If envy plays a part, so do personalities. Some haters took a kinder view of the Patriots after the departure of Mr. Belichick. Many thawed further with the arrival of a new quarterback, Drake Maye, and his wife Ann Michael Maye, whose homespun Christmas baking videos charmed legions of fans on TikTok in December.
“All hail the Queen of New England,” one viewer commented.
“Gisele never baked with us,” mused another, recalling Gisele Bündchen, the supermodel and former wife of Mr. Brady.
Fans of other teams found solace this season at bars throughout the region that cater to the displaced. In Boston, dozens of Packers fans took over the second floor at the Banshee Pub on Sundays, ignoring the Patriots ballyhoo downstairs.
“We just block all of that out,” said Warren Myers, an organizer of the gatherings.
Seahawks fans in New England said they were biding their time this week, awaiting their moment of payback. Eli Erwin hung green and blue lights on his house in Whiting, Vt. In Portsmouth, R.I., Leigh McGraw crafted Seahawks bandannas for her dogs.
“They feel it’s theirs, like they’re the chosen,” she said of Patriots fans. “I feel very strongly that we’re going to put it away.”
Hilary Traicoff, a New York Giants fan in Beverly, Mass., was bracing for one of two moods in her adopted state on Monday. “A region on top,” or “flags flown at half-mast.”
She has zero plans to change her allegiance, forged in her childhood in Connecticut, but she acknowledged the challenge: “It would be a lot easier if I were a Patriots fan.”
Jenna Russell is the lead reporter covering New England for The Times. She is based near Boston.
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