On Sunday night, the New England Patriots will play their sixth Christmas Eve-day game, and their first ever game on Christmas Eve night. They’ll be in Colorado, taking on the Denver Broncos for their Week 16 matchup.
The Patriots are 4-2 all time on Dec. 24. That includes a 22-18 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals at Gillette Stadium last year. Prior to that they’d won four in a row in 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2017. This is the first time the Patriots will play on Christmas Eve without Tom Brady since their first such game in 1989.
READ MORE:
—Week 16 Patriots Mailbag
—J.C. Jackson’s season “likely” over
—Former Tom Brady teammate joins Patriots practice squad
As for this year’s matchup, it will be with a Broncos team the Patriots haven’t played since 2000. This is the first time the two franchises have gone the maximum of three years without playing each other since the early 1990s. Their last meeting was the COVID year in 2020, when the Broncos held on for a narrow 18-12 win at Gillette Stadium.
2020 was a transitionary season for both teams, who have undergone multiple big changes since. We’ll start with one of those changes as we get into this week’s What To Watch For…