Please another dumb offseason Patriots cheating scandal
Please another dumb offseason Patriots cheating scandal
Please another dumb offseason Patriots cheating scandal
Please another dumb offseason Patriots cheating scandal
Please another dumb offseason Patriots cheating scandal
Please another dumb offseason Patriots cheating scandal

What I wouldn’t give for another offseason when I can just make comics about completely stupid stuff that annoys Pats fans, nothing rules like deliberately poking the hilarious levels of insecurity trapped in that fanbase.

Spygate 2.0! So if you haven’t followed it closely because this one isn’t getting a ton of attention comparatively speaking, the Patriots are in the process of filming a documentary called “Do Your Job” (Ugh) as a series for their social media/website/etc. They sent a crew to follow a scout who’s job it was to report on Cincy, the next opponent. “why do you need a scout to report on the worst team in the league” jokes aside, whatever. Sounds typical fluff to me. Apparently a Bengals employee got suspicious that the crew was actually just filming the Bengals coaching on the sidelines for most of the game. When approached by security, the cameraman apparently offered to delete the footage, which, like…that’s a red flag.

My opinion on all this? I…I actually kinda buy the Patriots innocence for the moment. The guy filming the coaching for as long as he did is the one part that really bothers me. But when you film things for B-roll footage (if you don’t know what B-Roll is, it is basically filler footage to add into edits to fill space and make semi interesting visuals during less important moments) you need coverage. A lot of B-Roll filming is just pointing a camera at a thing and letting it record for a while, then chopping it up into little quick shots in the editing room. If they wanted coverage of Zac Taylor being a coach for the video that they could then edit all the interesting moments in later, but you need the footage in the first place and for the most part he’s not going to be interesting. The length of the time that he filmed Taylor is a bit suspiciously long, but you’d be surprised how much B-Roll gets filmed for anything of this nature.

Belichick’s statement basically amounted to “That’s a different department than me so I don’t know or care what they are up to”. This, I completely buy. Belichick doesn’t give a fuck about social media, fluff pieces, and generally seems to find the media and anything to do with it a nuisance. The fact that they even got him on the TOP 100 PLAYERS EVER TV series the NFL is doing shocks me, but he is a sucker for talking football history, so at least it makes some sense. Belichick generally seems like he would be happiest if he could coach games without fans or cameras so the sport can be pure. I doubt Belichick gives any sorts of fucks about what the Patriots media department (likely the people in charge of this) is up to for the website.

What I think happened is that the Pats media team that is in charge of this little video project sent the B-level filmer to the Bengals game to grab B-roll or whatever for the website vid and the guy fucked up by being lazy because the team probably doesn’t pay him well enough. They technically broke the rules by not informing the Bengals of the filming, which is the other element that is just suspicious enough to warrant a side eye. I think the Pats fucked up but I don’t think it was intentionally malicious. If anything, I believe it because of how easily the guy got noticed. The Pats seem like they’d be at least slightly better at subterfuge. Obviously, due to the Patriots history with cheating scandals and one confirmed instance of actual illegal videotaping, it’s pretty easy to just buy in that this is more cheating. But unless more info or the footage itself comes out, I’m willing to remain pretty skeptical for now.

But god, what I wouldn’t give for this to explode and turn into a thing anyway. Cheatriots. #ReleaseTheKraftHandjobTape

EDIT: Check out the footage that the Pats guy was filming! This…uh…looks bad to me. It doesn’t look like B-roll footage, the angle wouldn’t be the right one. Consider me more skeptical now.