The Patriots were known as the Boston Patriots before 1971.
The New England Patriots were founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, a charter member of the AFL. The name “Patriots” had been suggested by a professor of American studies at Boston University and historian at Suffolk University (who’d grown up in Massachusetts).
Though not everyone agreed with naming a football team after those heroes of colonial times, especially since the British would have seen them as traitors, others felt it was an excellent way to pay tribute to American history. Besides, there were already several other teams named after patriots from that era.
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They moved to Foxborough, Massachusetts in 1971
You may have thought the “New” in the New England Patriots name was referring to the fact that the team is based in one of the country’s most rapidly changing cities, Boston. In truth, it refers to their location at a certain point in time — and that point of time was over 40 years ago.
After having played for just 10 seasons as the Boston Patriots, they moved to Foxborough, Massachusetts in 1971 and became the New England Patriots. (The team has continued to play at Foxborough ever since.)
Their old home field becoming too small
The Patriots’ home field was Boston University’s Nickerson Field. However, the facility became too small and outdated for a team whose popularity was growing by leaps and bounds. To accommodate their needs, they needed a bigger stadium with more seats, which would ensure more fans in the stands and therefore more money generated from ticket sales.
With this goal in mind, the Patriots sought to move to a larger stadium at the Harvard Business School in Boston. The negotiations were cut short because the city of Foxboro proposed an appropriate site for them and financed the construction of a new 66,829-seat stadium for them as long as they agreed to play there. The team accepted this offer and moved from Nickerson Field to Schaefer Stadium (now known as Gillette Stadium).
In 1960 they first started playing as “Boston Patriots.”
It all has to do with the area where the team is located. The New England Patriots are an NFL team that plays out of Massachusetts and has been around since 1960 when they first started playing under the name “Boston Patriots.”
In 1971, the name was changed to the current one in order to reflect the New England region rather than Boston as a city. The owner of this team is Robert Kraft.