The 1990 New England Patriots season was the team's 31st, and 21st in the National Football League. It was the first and only season for head coach Rod Rust.
The Patriots finished the season with a record of 1-15, the worst record in franchise history. They finished last in the AFC East division and dead last in the NFL. Notably, they lost a nationally-televised game to the Washington Redskins in which they were down 9–0 before the Redskins even ran an offensive play. The Redskins' two first-quarter scores came on a Kurt Gouveia fumble return for a touchdown, and the Patriots snapping the ball out of the end zone for a safety. The announced crowd for the game, played in a driving rain, was 22,286.
The Patriots’ final game of the season vs. the eventual Super Bowl champion New York Giants drew a sellout crowd to Foxboro, but over 40,000 fans were rooting for the visitors, as tickets to Giants home games are nearly impossible to come by for non-season ticket holders.
The Patriots’ negative-265 point-differential (181 points scored, 446 points surrendered) was the worst total of the 1990s. It is notable that like the previous season’s Dallas Cowboys, the Patriots played only three teams with non-winning records - divisional rivals the Colts and Jets plus one game against the Phoenix Cardinals - all season.
The 1990 Patriots and 1981 Baltimore Colts are the only NFL teams since 1940 to have eleven losses during which they never led in one season.
Read more about 1990 New England Patriots Season: Lisa Olson Controversy, Staff
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“Tried by a New England eye, or the more practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a race already in its dotage; but held up to the sky, which is the only impartial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a place and significance as long as there is a sky to test them by.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The American people is out to get the kaiser. We are bending every nerve and every energy towards that end; anybody who gets in the way of the great machine the energy and devotion of a hundred million patriots is building towards the stainless purpose of saving civilization from the Huns will be mashed like a fly. I’m surprised that a collegebred man like you hasn’t more sense. Don’t monkey with the buzzsaw.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“If woman is inconstant,
good, I am faithful to
ebb and flow, I fall
in season and now
is a time of ripening.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)