He would be really happy just to be able to watch the Patriots. Other teams are not really important to him.
Okay, here's how the football schedule works--sorry if you already know all of this, but it's how games are assigned between the two major football channels:
The NFL is divided into two conferences: the AFC and NFC. Every year, each team plays 12 games within its own conference, and four games with a team in the opposite conference. Two of those non-conference games are played at home, and two are played as a visitor.
The Sunday afternoon games (1:00 and 4:00 on the East Coast) are split between CBS and FOX. CBS has the rights to all games where the visiting team is in the AFC, and FOX has the rights to all games where the visiting team is in the NFC. Since each team hosts two non-conference opponents during the season, each team will play up to 14 of its games on one channel, and up to 2 on the other. The Patriots are in the AFC, so they would play the vast majority of their games on CBS--so if that "up to 1 channel" you could receive via antenna is CBS, you're in luck. Each local CBS/FOX affiliate will pick a game to play in each time slot. Since you live near Boston, your local CBS/FOX affiliate (whoever has the rights to the game in question) will almost undoubtedly pick the Patriots every time.
Of course, one game a week is also played on Thursday night, Sunday night, and Monday night, regardless of the visiting team's conference rule. Sunday night games belong to NBC, who gladly streams their game for free online every week on NBC.com. Easy. The other two games are broadcast on ESPN (Monday) and NFL Network (Thursday), so they are only available on cable/satellite. I am currently unaware of any legal streaming possibilities there, so whenever the Patriots play on these networks, your husband will need to find a bar/friend's house to watch at. This of course will require a fee (beers at the bar and drinks/snacks/travel time at his friend's house). Unfortunately (I guess) since the Patriots are consistently good and wildly popular, their games appear more frequently in the primetime slots, so it's a little more cumbersome being a Patriots fan than a Jags fan.
So:
- You get Sunday night games from NBC online
- Monday night and Thursday night games are cable/satellite only, so find a communal TV
- The Sunday afternoon Patriot games will be mostly on CBS, so you need to focus on getting this channel
Hopefully that one channel you can get is CBS. If not, I've heard some fans buy a slingbox and ask one of their friends to stream them the game (I'm not familiar with the product so I can't endorse it). Similarly, my parents (who have glorious Sunday Ticket) used a webcam pointed at the TV to stream a game to my brother when he was in college. My dad also used to tape his team's game and send them to a man in England (they met on a fan forum). Your husband likely knows people in Boston (or at least in better antenna-reception areas) who he could arrange something like this with. Even if he has to offer payment for the service, it's still cheaper than subscribing to cable.
MLB and NHL (other sports too, but I'm not a fan of any others) offer their own online viewing package (MLB.TV and NHL GameCenter) for out-of-market games. So, if you're a fan of a team not in your viewing market--for you, anyone other than the Red Sox and Bruins (and maybe a few others) you can watch if you buy the subscription. There are ways around the blackouts if you're in-market (definitely for the NHL, haven't tried it yet for MLB), but I won't go into that since it sounds like he's just an NFL fan.