This wasn't just the Patriots first game, but also the first regular season game for the American Football League. Bob Dee had been credited with the first points in league history when he recovered a fumble in the end zone for a safety in a preseason game against Buffalo. Gino Cappelletti scored the league's first points in a regular season game with a 35 yard first quarter field goal.
The game was played on a Friday night as the plan was to avoid going head to head with both the NFL on Sundays, and college football on Saturdays. The Pats played every 1960 home game on Friday night, and it was not until 1966 that they discontinued playing at least some of their home games on a Friday. The Pats played a total of 26 games on Fridays, accumulating a 16-8-2 record on that day of the week.
The link above focuses primarily on the AFL as a whole, but also offers this perspective from a Boston Globe writer in 1960:
Prior to the opener, John Ahern, wrote in the Boston Globe, “Four times professional football has been tried in our town, four times it folded. Huge sums were lost and Boston was consigned to the sticks, the limbo of broken football dreams. Friday night at Boston University (old Braves Field), the town’s fifth pro venture breathes new life. It’s as welcome as the flowers in May and it will be greeted enthusiastically by a populace that has not seen good football since Boston College’s Sugar Bowl team of 20 years back.”
The four previous attempts that Ahern referred to were:
• The Boston Bulldogs 1929
• The Boston Braves 1932
• The Boston Redskins 1933-1936 (Yes, before Washington they were the Boston Redskins.)
• The Boston Yanks 1944-1948
During the 1960 pre-season the Patriots compiled a 4-1 record that included a 43-6 drubbing of the Broncos. The Broncos lost all five of their pre-season games. But that was practice. In front of 21,597 fans (How many saved their programs?) and a large local radio audience on Boston’s WEEI, the Broncos defeated the Pats in a squeaker, 13-10.
More on the game here:
The fourth, and ultimately most successful, organization to be known as the American Football League (AFL) had its regular season debut on ...
fs64sports.blogspot.com
36-year-old QB Ed “Butch” Songin, a local product from Boston College who had also played briefly in Canada, completed the AFL’s first pass, to end Jim Colclough. There was no scoring until late in the period when Gino Cappelletti, who had played collegiately at the University of Minnesota and briefly in the CFL after going undrafted by the NFL, kicked a 35-yard field goal that put the Patriots up by 3-0.
Both defenses played well, and the Patriots made a big play defensively in the fourth quarter when DB Chuck Shonta intercepted a pass and returned it 52 yards to set up a 10-yard touchdown pass from Songin to Colclough. The Broncos held on, however, and won by a final score of 13-10.
Butch Songin went to the air 24 times and had 12 completions for 145 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions (both by Denver safety Goose Gonsoulin, on his way to leading the AFL with 11). FB Jim Crawford led the team in rushing with 29 yards on 8 carries; HB Larry Garron was right behind at 26 yards on 7 attempts. Jim Colclough caught 4 passes for 42 yards and a TD; Crawford also had 42 receiving yards on his two receptions.
Take a look back 50 years to the Patriots first game on Septmber 6, 1960.
www.patriots.com
There is an in-depth recap of this game on the Patriots website (see link above), which includes this tidbit:
The game was not without controversy though. It was rumored that Denver Head Coach Frank Filchock, while on a walk from his team hotel the day before the opener, strolled into the stadium to watch the Patriots practice and knew his opponent's game plan. It certainly seemed so on this day.
