New England Patriots: 5 observations from win over Raiders

Bienvenido a Mexico!

Yesterday’s contest was played at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. I was a little skeptical when I heard the Patriots were playing the Raiders south of the border, but this place was awesome.

First things first, the Estadio Azteca is enormous. It seats a maximum of 87,000 people and is the largest stadium in all of Mexico. It is the most famous as well, having hosted two World Cup Finals.

The stadium itself was very cool, and the fans were great. At no point did it seem like the game was being held in a different country.

Both Patriots fans and Raiders fans a plenty showed up, and the atmosphere was electric. The fan breakdown was said to have been roughly even, but I would imagine Raiders fans outnumbered Patriots fans by a few thousand.

With talks of the NFL expanding to new markets, I wouldn’t mind a franchise in the capital of our southern neighbor. In Mexico, football means soccer. Today, we showed them what American football is.

Oh, and the stadium is 7,200 feet above sea level. That makes for some fun field goal attempts, but we’ll get to that later.