As the Patriots sit at 7-0, the NFL probably isn’t happy about the way New England has rolled through the first eight weeks of the season, but now it looks like things are really starting to get a little ridiculous.
The league has said in the past that most accusations made by other teams are “taken under advisement” due to the silly nature of some of the ones that are likely made over the course of an NFL season. The more reasonable ones would seem to the ones they would act on, and last Sunday against the Jets, it seems the league felt strongly enough to conduct what essentially resembled a raid on Gillette Stadium.
According to WFAN Radio announcer Boomer Esiason, the Jets requested a sweep of the locker room for possible listening devices before last week’s contest, which ProFootballTalk.com confirmed did take place, although there have been other reports denying the Jets requested it. Mike Florio of PFT said the incident occurred “as part of the ‘??regular [and] random checks’? that the NFL conducts at all stadiums,” which essentially says it was part of the league’s routine procedure, but the story then takes an interesting turn.
Jeff Howe of the Boston Herald revealed that not only was the locker room swept, an NFL employee even interrogated three Patriots employees during the second quarter of the game, taking photographs of each employee and their identification badges, while also demanding to check their cell phones and also checked their radios to ensure they were operating through the proper channels. The NFL employee reportedly stayed there into the third quarter before a stadium operations manager told them “to route all further inquiries through Patriots and Gillette Stadium management”.
The Patriots were reportedly later told that nothing was found and there had been no wrongdoing, which was reaffirmed to the team on Monday.
Needless to say with DeflateGate still looming after the league filed their appeal this week, “routine” or not, the NFL still seems to be searching for some sort of smoking gun from a Patriots team who is just three wins away from adding another 10-win season to the record books, having won 10 or more games in every season dating all the way back to 2003 while also not having a losing season since 2000.
New England is off this weekend after their 36-7 win over the Dolphins Thursday night, and will battle the Redskins next Sunday at Gillette Stadium.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
