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FOXBOROUGH – When the Patriots take on the Bears inside historic Soldier Field on Sunday afternoon, Vederian Lowe won’t have a ton of family and friends there despite growing up in Rockford, Illinois.

In fact, there’s only one person that’ll be there cheering him on.

His grandfather Jerry Lowe will see him play in the NFL for the first time.

Since being drafted by Minnesota in 2022, Lowe hasn’t had a chance to play an NFL game back in Chicago. Despite such a big moment, Lowe said it’ll be a special, but lowkey experience for him and his grandfather.

“My grandfather who helped me get to this point, that’s where he’s from. So, he’ll be able to go to the game and watch me play in the NFL for the first time,” Lowe said at his locker Thursday. “It’s a special place…it’s a comfortable feeling when I go back to Illinois. It’s what I’ve known, it’s what I grew up around. Just going back there, there’s a lot of familiarity and feeling comfortable, everything like that.

So, why just Jerry? Perhaps more importantly, will he be rooting for the Bears or the Patriots?

“He’s the only person that I really want to see me play, so yeah, just him,” Lowe said. “He just wants to see me succeed, so it doesn’t matter who we’re playing.”

Lowe has played one game in Soldier Field when he was a member of the Illinois Fighting Illini back in 2019, but some of his fondest memories of football around the area came during his younger days.

“Back in Rockford, the Rockford Park District would always have wrap up parties for football camps and sometimes the Bears players would come down and would speak at a dinner the night before,” he explained. “Stuff like that. Memories from that. Seeing Bears players when I was in high school. Traveling to all the Illinois games my grandfather took me to before I even enrolled going to the University of Illinois games.

“There’s a lot of memories there, a lot of memories.”

Lowe said he wasn’t really a Bears fan growing up, but he was more a guy who rooted for specific names, not jerseys.

“I rooted for players,” he said. “Cam Newton, Tom Brady, Randy Moss. But, growing up in Illinois, you know about the Bears and the history of it. My favorite players…I had a few. Devin Hester, Brian Urlacher, Matt Forte and Brandon Marshall Then, when Lovie (Smith) was there and they had (Hester), (Urlacher), (Forte) and they had those good years…I loved seeing that, that being my home state team, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I was a Bears fan.”

So, while 60,000+ Bears fans are hoping Vederian Lowe gets blown up and Drake Maye is eating turf all day, he and Jerry are two Chicagoans that will be hoping for quite the opposite.

Either way, it’ll be a day both of them never forget.