Following the end of the Patriots’ 1994 season — a Wild Card round loss in Cleveland to the Bill Belichick-led Browns — Jonathan Kraft, the team’s Vice President at the time, picked up the phone.
His call was to the editor of New England Sport — Journal of the Sports Museum of New England, a quarterly publication covering sports at every level in the region. In the preceding months the editor of the magazine had sent Kraft a letter detailing an idea he had for the creation of in-house Patriots content. The editor’s name was Fred Kirsch.