New England Patriots
“I think you embrace it when you try to build an identity, and you carry it on the road with you.”
The Patriots are 9-0 away from Gillette Stadium this season. (Barry Chin/Globe Staff)
February 6, 2026 | 6:55 AM
5 minutes to read
SAN FRANCISCO — The Patriots might be the designated home team for Super Bowl LX on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium.
But it won’t be reflected in their uniforms in Santa Clara.
Given the choice of the gameday attire, the Patriots leadership group opted for their road whites.
“We had to pick blue or white, and we went with white. I guess the blue would have been a good idea. As long as we’ve got a uniform on,” Mike Vrabel said last week. “I went through this with the uniform police in Tennessee. I try not to get too involved with it. We’re the home team. We get to choose. Guys like the white uniforms.”
As unorthodox as it might be, New England’s track record away from Gillette Stadium speaks for itself.
The Patriots are 9-0 this season in road games — and 5-0 in bouts where they wear both their white jerseys and white pants.
But the decision to pack those road whites isn’t rooted into that sterling record.
“There we go. I hope the tooth fairy comes tonight, too,” Vrabel said sarcastically when New England’s record was brought up. “We’ll be real excited.”
Rather, it goes back to a mantra and a foundational piece of this Patriots team’s identity — one fostered by a roster that seemingly plays its best football in adverse conditions.
The 2025 Patriots embraced the label of “Road Warriors” — for more reasons than one.
“This season is like a storybook — everybody had their own experiences throughout their lives, and they kind of inserted them in this team,” Stefon Diggs said. “Like the ‘road warrior’ concept, going on the road, going in a hostile environment — it’s just like something we kind of got conditioned to do.”
The motto was crafted by the 2025 NFL Coach of the Year in Vrabel, although even the Patriots head coach didn’t expect it to become one of the defining rallying cries for a team that’s now one win away from a Super Bowl title.
“It’s amazing what sticks,” Vrabel admitted. “I didn’t think at the time that it would have stuck, but here we are at the end of January, and it’s still sticking.”
Vrabel and his coaching staff are no strangers when it comes to diving deep into the video archives to keep players entertained, attentive, and motivated during the long hours spent reviewing film, installing game plans, and preaching principles.
When announcing game captains on the Friday before games, Vrabel would showcase highlights of that player out on the gridiron — while also weaving in awkward highlights taken from their high-school career.
Outside of the gridiron, Vrabel is no stranger to sharing clips from other sports, movies and more in order to motivate his players.
Around the Patriots’ Week 2 matchup against the Dolphins — New England’s first road trip of the season — Vrabel first started to show clips of the “The Road Warriors,” an 80s-era tag-team wrestling duo also called “The Legion of Doom”.
New England’s head coach eventually had to pivot.
“I ran out of WWF clips to show them about the Road Warriors,” Vrabel lamented.
As the Patriots embraced the challenge of three-straight road games against the Bills, Saints, and Titans, Vrabel switched gears.
He opted to show a clip from the 1979 cult film, “The Warriors” — where the titular group was taunted by a rival gang member.
The oldest player on New England’ roster, Morgan Moses, wasn’t born until 1991. Even Vrabel was just four years old when “The Warriors” hit theaters.
But the film — and the sight of the villain, Luther, clanging bottles together with his fingers, — clearly resonated with Vrabel’s players … and even his staff.
“I mean, the first time, I think [director of sports performance] Frank [Piraino] emptied two soy sauces and a Red Hot bottle, and was walking around the building,” Vrabel said. “And I’m like, “What are you doing?” And he’s like, “Warriors.”
“And I was like, “It’s a soy sauce – it’s like a soy sauce bottle and a Red Hot.”’
The Patriots players clearly took note, however, with their new rallying cry reinforced on numerous occasions during New England’s victory over the Broncos in the AFC championship game last moth.
As veteran wideout Mack Hollins arrived on the scene at Empower Field at Mile High, he clanged together a trio of bottles together in a reenactment of Luther’s taunt.
“Warriors! Come out to play-ayyy,” Hollins said as he walked by cameras.
“That’s kind of been our rally cry for a while, and I thought it was a good thing to do for that one,” Hollins said on Wednesday, adding: “There’s probably like five of us who have seen that movie. … I like to have fun with my arrival outfit, so it was good.
“The bottles I got were smaller. They took some searching to find, but they still weren’t small enough. They’re not like the size of the little stubbies that they had in the movies back in the day. So luckily, my hands are big enough to really hold them. A smaller handed person would have definitely struggled.”
Vrabel issued a similar “WARRIORS!” decree in the Patriots locker room after that 10-7 win, in which New England gutted out a raucous Denver crowd and brutal weather conditions to punch their ticket to Super Bowl LX.
While Levi’s Stadium will feature its fair share of New England fans making the trek out west for Super Bowl LX, the Patriots are expecting a lot of noise from a hefty contingent of Seahawks fans — deemed The 12s” in reference to being the extra person on the field.
The stakes will be higher than ever on Sunday. But be it a muggy afternoon in Miami, a snow-swept field in Denver, or a crisp evening in Santa Clara on Sunday, New England’s approach away from Gillette Stadium remains unchanged.
“I think you embrace it when you try to build an identity, and you carry it on the road with you,” Drake Maye said, adding: “It’s not pretty. It’s not going to be everything we wanted. But there’s times on the road where we’ve been on fire, and there’s times when you’re just trying to do whatever you can to win. I think that’s what playoff football is about.”
For Diggs, it comes as little surprise that this roster — one comprised of cast-offs, reclamation projects, and unproven youngsters — welcomes any opportunity to go into hostile territory and sap the energy out of the building.
“I just think it’s stuck, because it’s a lot of guys from this team who come from different backgrounds, or come from different teams,” Diggs said. “[They’ve] been cut, been signed in free agency, whatever it is. No sob stories. We all gonna band together. We’re gonna figure out a ways to win. So that’s why I think the ‘road warrior’ mindset kind of translated so well.”
The Patriots have one more road game left on their docket this season.
If the “road warriors” live up to their billing, they could be coming home with football’s greatest prize.
Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.
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