Peyton Manning feared Patriots bugging visitors’ locker room

Yup, it’s time for every rumor of nefarious Patriots activity to come out, isn’t it?This is what Deflategate is really about – not so much deflated footballs, but the perception that the Patriots bend every rule and take every advantage possible to help them win. I’ve heard all the rumors, that QB communications would mysteriously drop out, that the tarp would be taken off early back when the Gillette Stadium surface was still grass among others, and now we can add bugging the locker room.

We are so inside the rest of the NFL’s heads, and now, unfortunately, we’re paying the price, whether any of it is true or not. And really, it doesn’t even need to be true to be effective and this is a prime example. Because instead of focusing on the game, even Peyton Manning has to spend time worrying that his conversations might not be private. That’s winning the battle before it’s fought.

So as much as the Tom Brady haters want to pretend all the vitriol is based on an imperceptible amount of ball pressure that had no effect on the outcome of a game, it’s about all these rumors over the years. Spygate had nothing to do with Brady, but it’s still thrown in our face about him being a “cheater”.

Deflategate was finally something guys like Mike Kensil thought they had caught the Patriots red-handed with. It didn’t matter how inconsequential and unprovable it was. The second they thought they “had” the Patriots, there was no going back. They were going to make sure Belichick was nailed to the wall for it. 

That’s where Deflategate failed in the eyes of those who wanted it to be real so badly, they really wanted it to be pinned on Belichick and that’s why you still hear echoes of that from sources through the media. They see Belichick as the mastermind but in Deflategate they had to settle for Brady.

And it looks like even that is going to backfire on them.

How fun it is to be the big bad wolf of the NFL.