2/17 Rumor: Pats' locker room attendant tried to put unapproved kicking ball in AFCCG

rlcarr said:

I would love love love to know what prompted Schefter's call into OTL. Surely it's not commonplace for ESPN employee B to completely blow up ESPN employee A's report --- on A's own show!

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Either that report by Kelly was just suppose to drum up clicks and attention or Schefter just did not want her to make a shoddy telecast. This is just like the Jay Glazer report of a Patriots employee going to an area in the stadium away from the field with the balls. It is irresponsible reporting, it does more damage to all involved.
Hey the will claim they don't have any agenda they just want to report.

What if its actually not ESPN's fault and they are actually only reporting what their sources are telling them, then there is somebody inside the NFL who is leaking only part of the story to make the Patriots look bad?

Hmmm, the story is off the front page of ESPN.....

They beat a dead horse so many times, that people couldn't care less about this crap anymore.

What's funny about all of this, is that this stuff with the footballs probably have happened in every single games for seemingly decades, and now because the Colts are a joke, they've lit a fire that will end with NFL officials getting fired, thus creating a bigger ****storm that will negatively impact the whole league.

And we're Super Bowl Champs, laughing our a***s off at the hoopla.

Who is leaking the information that makes it sound like the big evil Patriots are at it again? Because now this McNally's name and address have been released and he's being hounded by reporters and it sounds like he didn't do anything wrong intentionally. This is beyond disgusting at this point.

rlcarr said:

Curran's summary:

Tom E. Curran‏@tomecurran
In short, lg official swiped game ball to sell for own gain. Another lg official gave replacement ball to McNally to get count back to 12.

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It occurs to me...

If Curran is correct with his reference to "12" balls, then that means this is about one of the offenses' balls, not a K ball.

So the Patriots were not trying to introduce an unapproved official ball into the game, but the NFL was trying to introduce the unapproved official ball into the game, but leaked news that went all around the world and implicated the patriots and kept quiet but it comes out today that they actually fired someone for wrong doing for giving the ball to a patriots employee to give to one of their cronies ? Do I have it straight?

This looks leaks from the NFL front office ahem Mike Kensil trying to paint the pats in a negative light and the pats counter attack leak to Shefter, if Opie can't control his own office eff it let's air all the dirty laundry.

Hazy said:

What if its actually not ESPN's fault and they are actually only reporting what their sources are telling them, then there is somebody inside the NFL who is leaking only part of the story to make the Patriots look bad?

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Bull ****. ESPN shares the blame. They're so willingly quick to take what they hear without checking, double checking and questioning the validity of their sources. Not ESPN'S fault? Not to pile on you, but that suggestion is absurd.

Looking more and more likely that Kraft will be getting his apology...

borg said:

The "Hot Take" from this latest revelation will be....Patriots tampered with both the offensive game balls AND the kicking balls as well. .....in other words....shenanigans on a grander scale. If this guy turns out to be the same person that took the "approved" game balls from the officials before the game and into the bathroom for 93 seconds.....and then later tries to introduce an illegal kicking ball into the game.......then my initial lack of concern regarding deflategate must now be readjusted to a more suspicious level.
Local fandom will likely use terms like "coincidence" or "accident" in order to justify this "mistake" / "screwup". But given the supposed length of his Patriot employment as officials locker room attendant, I hope no one is going to argue that this guy is completely unaware of "ball rules."
When a "person of interest" happens to be holding the smoking gun.....
The news cycle about to take hold is going to be all over Kraft. A special Kraft Group employee smack in the middle of this scandal. Given Bob's public defense of his team, mediots will be vicious toward him now. You'll see

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LOl....want a mulligan?

ESPN has been practicing the "READY...FIRE...AIM" strategy for years.

Todd Bradley said:

Looking more and more likely that Kraft will be getting his apology...

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I wouldn't be waiting under water for that one...

This I can bet. Florio is writing one masterpiece to post tonight after all has quite down and he is going to lay into the NFL.

vuudu said:

This I can bet. Florio is writing one masterpiece to post tonight after all has quite down and he is going to lay into the NFL.

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Then tomorrow night he will flip flop and lay into the Patriots...in typical Florio fashion

patsfan06 said:

Then tomorrow night he will flip flop and lay into the Patriots...in typical Florio fashion

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Of course, the media version of the classic "bait and switch."

Hazy said:

What if its actually not ESPN's fault and they are actually only reporting what their sources are telling them, then there is somebody inside the NFL who is leaking only part of the story to make the Patriots look bad?

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So best case scenario ESPN is passing on misleading information to suit someone else's agenda? That's a pretty bad best case scenario for a news outlet/

BradyFTW! said:

So best case scenario ESPN is passing on misleading information to suit someone else's agenda? That's a pretty bad best case scenario for a news outlet/

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I think you just described ESPN's core business.

Just to follow on my earlier comment as I see only 2 scenarios for what happened. The latest leak and/or the reporting of the leak proves that either of these 2 things happened:

1. ESPN had the full story and only choose to report the parts of the story that made the Patriots look bad, making the “scandal” look worse to further their agenda
2. An NFL insider only leaked part of the story to the ESPN reporter on purpose to make the Patriots look bad

Somebody in the media or NFL is out to make the Patriots look worse than they are. I’m leaning towards scenario 2 as Adam Schefter works for ESPN and his source told him the whole truth, it’d be a little strange for ESPN to play this game and diffuse the situation they created so quickly (especially since Schefter rang into a show he is never on, they could have waited till Sports Center, his usual spot).

Compare this report to the Chris Mortensen report. Chris Mortensen reported that 11 of 12 footballs were 2lbs less than the legal limit, that report went unchallenged for days and kicked off the whole deflate gate mess. It has since been reported by numerous news outlets and ESPN itself that the Chris Mortensen report is not as accurate as it seems…but the damage was done, the Patriots are already guilty and BB should be fired, etc.

Imagine in this scenario if Adam Schefter didn’t jump in to diffuse the situation quickly? The story was going to blow up again like with the Chris Mortensen report but with the poor ball boy Jim McNally being the focus of the national media man hunt, when all he was doing was his job. (It also came out today that it was the Patriots who notified the NFL that a ball was missing).

After the findings of the investigation are released, the Patriots should be demanding an investigation into the leaks as they are quite malicious in their intent.