A drive to Gillette Stadium for the Patriots’ Super Bowl send-off rally turned into a surprise flight to Santa Clara for a Massachusetts dad and son.
Aaron Tarver and his son, Duncan, have never been to a Super Bowl, but that will change after the father and son won two tickets to attend next Sunday’s Patriots-Seahawks championship clash in California.
“I never thought I’d be here, never thought in a million years,” an excited Duncan Tarver told the Herald, moments after he and his dad learned they scored the pair of tickets as part of a Bud Light-sponsored special prize.
Aaron Tarver, left, and his son, Duncan Tarver, right, of Dighton, are going to the Super Bowl after scoring a pair of tickets at the Patriots send-off rally at Gillette Stadium. (Lance Reynolds/Boston Herald)
The father and son drove to Foxboro from their home in Dighton early Sunday morning, arriving at a severely bitterly cold Gillette Stadium around 4 a.m., well before the send-off rally got underway in the late morning.
New England hosted its first Super Bowl send-off rally in seven years, with well over 10,000 fans braving a blustery wind chill that plummeted below zero, making it feel as cold as -10. Fans who aren’t flying out to Santa Clara took in their final chance to see Patriots players and coaches this season.
“No way,” Aaron Tarver, 56, told the Herald when asked whether he has been to a Super Bowl. These are thousands-of-dollar tickets, no way.”
The father highlighted how he and his son were the first fans to arrive at Patriot Place plaza, waiting about 30 minutes before other passionate fans started to file in. The first 300 ticketed fans who checked in at a Bud Light on-site activation entered to win either the two Super Bowl tickets or beer money.
“We just stuck together because we didn’t know what was going on,” Aaron Tarver said. “I was like, ‘If there’s 100, 200 of us, we’re all best friends.’ This was a team day.”
Duncan Tarver, 24, has been a Patriots fan his entire life, being born “into greatness” at the start of the 2001 season. The first real season he remembers is 2007, when New England went 18-0 before dropping the Super Bowl to the Giants.
Now? He’s hoping the 17-3 Patriots can win their first Super Bowl of the Mike Vrabel-Drake Maye era, and he and his father will be there.
“I’m just trying to be grateful for it all. It’s incredible,” Tarver said of the team’s success. “Talking about fandom, bias, I think we’d be the best team every single year, but I would be lying if I said I thought that we’d be going to the Super Bowl.”
Fans filled the lower bowl and the field for the send-off rally. Scores of Patriots alumni, including Super Bowl champions Matt Light, Dan Koppen, Patrick Chung and Robert Ninkovich, greeted them, sending advice to the current team and leading rally chants, “We all we got, we all we need.”
The Dropkick Murphys played a few songs, including their hit “The Boys Are Back,” but they changed the lead verse to “The Pats Are Back.”
The loudest crowd roar came when head coach Mike Vrabel and a group of players took the stage.
“Every week we played here, it got better and better and better,” Vrabel said of being at Gillette Stadium. “A coach is only as good as his players, I promise you that. I know that for a fact. And a big part of our success is our players.”
The coach gave a special nod to his quarterback before passing the microphone to Maye.
“You guys have been great all season,” Maye told the cold but lively fans. “Man, wouldn’t be here without you guys. What a journey, and we still got work left to do. … Celebrate when we get back. Go Pats, baby.”
The Foxboro police and fire departments escorted a caravan of team buses to TF Green Airport in Warwick, Rhode Island, after festivities at Gillette came to a close. Fans lined the roads, waving them on for one final time.
“Every game, we were just like, ‘This is it. We’re coming to the end of the season,’” fan Kayla O’Connor told the Herald, “and every time, we were like ‘They really are something, they really are a team.’ They called it a family at some point, and it looks like it.”
“There’s nothing like New England,” she added.
A fan wears “Go Pats” bling and a face mask against the cold during Sunday’s rally. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)
Patriots including Stefon Diggs, Mack Hollins, Drake Maye, Garrett Bradbury and Hunter Henry wave to fans at Sunday’s rally(Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)
A young fan holds up a sign looking for a seventh Super Bowl trophy. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)