FOXBOROUGH – Gillette Stadium used to be a hard place to play.

Now, it’s a welcoming abode for other teams looking to get things back on track.

We’ll take your bags and make sure there’s a mint on the pillow.

Sure, for almost all of the 20-year dynasty, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick gave the team an advantage even before opponents began prepping for the Pats that week, but a lot of games were won before anyone took the field because of the home field advantage. Noise, weather, all of it.

Now, Gillette Stadium often sounds and feels more like a neutral site game.

The sea of Terrible Towels waving around Foxborough on Sunday was alarming. The Steelers fan base is a great one that travels well, but imagine seeing thousands of Steelers fans here from 2002-2018ish? A few hundred? Maybe, but nothing like we saw on Sunday. Early in the morning, there were far more Troy Polamalu, Ben Roethlisberger, Hines Ward, James Harrison and Jerome Bettis jerseys walking around than Pats jerseys.

The Dunkins when you immediately get off 95 South was overrun by black and gold.

Games like those against the Raiders or coming up this week against Carolina will still be 90/10 Patriots fans, but even the bad teams in the league no longer roll past several McDonalds and gas stations through the woods of Foxborough thinking they’re probably going to lose.

In the last three years, the Pats are just 3-16 at Gillette since then. In 2022, they went just 4-4.

So, how does this team get back to making Foxborough a real advantage again? How do they make sure fans continue investing their time and money into Sundays every fall? Is there now added pressure on guys with so much failure at a place that once provided a near-guaranteed victory?

“The main thing I would say is anytime we’re playing, we’re trying to win. Being here with the fans being loud and being on our side and stuff like that, it’s an advantage. We’ve just got to finish games,” Marcus Jones said at his locker on Monday.

“That’s the main thing. Get everything handled, communicate and get all the things done we need to get done to get a dub. That way, when teams do come here it makes it hard for them…We know whenever we’re home, defensive wise it helps it out. Home field advantage is a real thing. We don’t really look into the pressure whether we’re playing home or away. We’re just trying to win football games.”

“Win football games,” Brendan Schooler added. “You’re winning, the fans will be here. So, we’ve just got to go out there and start winning.”

What about the process on Saturday nights or pregame on Sunday? Can anything change there to reverse fortunes at home?

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do differently. I just think it’s producing and executing on the field. Just winning games at home,” Rhamondre Stevenson said. “I don’t think it’s nothing more than that, honestly…there’s no distractions for me. I can’t speak for anybody else. I don’t really know, but I know we need to start winning at home.”

Mike Onwenu also shared his thoughts on the home struggles.

“Every week is different, but speaking for this week, we’ve just got to execute,” he said. “We had a lot of opportunities to win the game, but the better team just took advantage of opportunities and our disadvantages and beat us. We’re professionals. You should be comfortable enough to perform (at home), I think it’s just we’ve got to lock in to the fine details. Whether it’s the penalties or beating ourselves…the better team beat us, but we definitely helped.

“I think it’s still a hard place to play. I think our fans make sure of that. It’s on our part as players and athletes to win these games and make sure that continues on.”

New England has another chance to send fans home happy this week with a winnable game against a poor Panthers team.

If they don’t, the demise of a once great home field advantage may truly be complete.