NFL conducts random bug sweeps, like maybe before Jets-Patriots game
New England Coach Bill Belichick on the sideline during the second half of the Patriots’ game against the New York Jets on Oct. 25, 2015, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.
The New England Patriots are 7-0 on field and undefeated in the heads of the NFL and their opponents.
The thought of playing the Patriots is enough to give NFL teams the heebie-jeebies and apparently grounds to ask the league to check the visitors’ locker room for listening devices -- though that wasn’t necessarily the case with the New York Jets last week.
Boomer Esiason suggested on his WFAN-AM radio show Friday that the Jets had asked the NFL to check their locker room before their 30-23 loss to the Patriots on Sunday.
“We shouldn’t get caught up in all this stuff. It’s like the Jets going up to Gillette Stadium and asking the NFL to sweep the locker room for bugs, and I don’t mean bed bugs I mean listening devices,” Esiason said. “That’s the paranoia about going up to [play in New England].”
The team would not confirm that such a request was made to ProFootballTalk, and the league later said the Jets did not ask for a search. Sooo, what did happen?
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy seemed to address the report on Twitter.
Had the Jets requested a bug sweep, that wouldn’t necessarily be shocking. The Jets were the victims of SpyGate in 2007, when the Patriots videotaped defensive play calls from their own sidelines.
Spygate resulted in a $500,000 fine for Patriots Coach Bill Belichick and cost New England $250,000 and a first-round pick in the 2008 draft. That year, New England posted an undefeated record of 16-0 in the regular season, only to fall to the New York Giants, 17-14, in Super Bowl XLII.
But the paranoia isn’t limited to the New York area.
“Peyton Manning has always thought that there were listening devices in there,” Esiason said. “When he would go in there and he would talk to his teammates, he’d put his hand over this mouth and he’d whisper into the ear of his teammates because he was afraid that there could actually be a camera in there to read his lips.”
Earlier this season, Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin complained that his team’s headsets malfunctioned during their season-opening, 28-21 loss to the Patriots.
“That’s always the case [at Gillette Stadium],” Tomlin said after the game.
The Patriots were also involved in the DeflateGate scandal in last year’s AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts where several footballs registered below the 12-pounds-of-air-pressure-per-square-inch threshold.
That scandal garnered New England a $1-million fine and the loss of a first-round draft pick this coming year and a fourth-round pick in 2017.
If the NFL did sweep the Jets’ locker room at Gillette Stadium, maybe it’s the Patriots who should be paranoid.
Follow Matt Wilhalme on Twitter @mattwilhalme
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