So, basically, the Pats need to get everything right 100% of the time even when a supposed infraction wasn't by the football ops part of their organization. No wiggle room for honest mistakes. Good to know.
Patriots penalized for encroaching opponent's area during 2021 game with Bills
by AP/WKRC
Sunday, June 26th 2022
NEW YORK (AP/WKRC) — The New England Patriots have been fined $1.4 million by the NFL for inappropriately entering the visitor's area in the stands during a game last season.
On Sunday, the league also took away a second-round pick in the 2023 draft.
Also, the team's stadium vendors will not be allowed to sell any food or beverages in the stands during games in the 2022 season.
ESPN first reported the penalties. An NFL spokesman confirmed the discipline to The Associated Press.
The infraction occurred at the Bills game in Foxborough on Dec. 12 of last season. The Patriots defeated the Bills, 27-21 to clinch the AFC East Division.
When incident became known last season, the team said at the time a stadium employee selling Pepsi to spectators “inadvertently stepped into the secure area where only the visiting team's employees and family members sit" during games at Gillette Stadium.
The behavior took place “without specific knowledge of league rules,” the statement said.
Also, the team's statement last season said that while they have been selling refreshments ever since opening in Foxborough in 1971, “our failure to inform the boy was an unintended oversight.”
When confronted, the team said the male vendor “immediately turned over all his soda and money to the league and cooperated fully.”
At the time, Patriots coach Bill Belichick says neither he nor his coaching staff had any contact with anyone in the reserved area, or drank any Pepsi.
“I personally have never seen anyone there at all, or drank Pepsi, other than what’s served in the locker room or something like that,” Belichick said in December.
Previously, New England was fined $250,000 and lost a first-round draft pick in 2007 for doing something perfectly legal only from what the NFL decided was an 'unauthorized location' in a fake scandal accurately deemed “CryGate.” Belichick was also fined $500,000.
CryGate fueled a distrust of the Patriots that persisted when the team was accused of illegally deflating the footballs used in the 2015 AFC championship game.
The punishment by the NFL in that case was also severe, despite the physiological impossibility that the Patriots ever did anything, and voluminous evidence of conspiracy and prejudice in collaboration between opponents and the league, and brazen lies buy the league in court. Quarterback Tom Brady was suspended four games, and the team was fined $1 million and docked another first-round draft pick in what is accurately deemed "DefameGate".
AP Pro Football Writer Actual Pats Fan contributed to this report.
