The NFL may have swept the visitor’s locker room at Gillette Stadium prior to the Jets game, but such inspections are routine and nothing turned up, a league source told CSNNE on Friday.
“We have conducted for years routine and random checks across the league,” the source stated. “We do not get into details of specific games.”
Mike Florio at Pro Football Talk reported Friday that the locker rooms were indeed inspected prior to the Jets game. The story germinated Friday morning when radio host Boomer Esiason first shared what he knew.
That story was fleshed out to where we are now: The Jets didn’t request the sniffing, nothing was found, this particular party is over.
No matter how “routine and random” the sweeps may indeed be, that this franchise, this year was targeted for a sweep and that the sweep became public adds to the sense the league’s operations arm is plunging deeply into the Patriots organization and trying to extract something damning.
That a New York media fixture like Esiason won’t quell the idea either that the NFL’s higher-ups are still pretty leaky when it comes to Patriotic gossip.
This is the second Friday morning after a nationally broadcast Patriots game that a suggestion of New England subterfuge was the business of the day.
New England Patriots
Earlier this year, Mike Tomlin of the Steelers slung pooh at the Pats over headphone issues.