From SpyGate to DeflateGate, the Patriots have been at the center of a number of NFL scandals over the last two decades. But have they taken cheating—er, alleged cheating?—to the next level? Some NFL fans think so after what transpired at Gillette Stadium on Sunday night.
The Patriots took part in a home game against the Falcons in a rematch of last season’s Super Bowl, and New England crushed Atlanta handily 23-7 during it. But after the game, people weren’t talking about the Pats’ dominating performance over the Falcons. Instead, they were talking about the ridiculously heavy fog that fell over Gillette Stadium during the second half, which made it almost impossible for people both at the game and at home to see what was going on on the field. It also seemed to slow the game down and prevent both offenses from getting any momentum going.
If this had happened at just about any other game, fans would have thought, "Wow, that fog was really something, huh?" and moved on. But because it happened during a Patriots’ game in Massachusetts, the conspiracy theorists came out and accused the Patriots and Patriots head coach Bill Belichick of having something to do with it. No, really. Just take a look at how people responded to all of the fog suddenly showing up right around halftime.
We think (um, hope?) most of these people were just kidding. But if you thought those outside of New England were over SpyGate and DeflateGate, FogGate—as it’s already being called—just proved otherwise. And while it would be easy to brush all of this off as being silly, we would like to point out that Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones had an extremely hot take on it that might lend some credence to the conspiracy theory about the fog.
"It didn’t affect me," Jones said. "It’s crazy, though. They score and they shoot fireworks off and then it sits up and sits high kind of in the stadium. So it’s kind of hard, if you do get behind, how can you throw deep balls and things like that because it’s foggy?"
Hmmm…Crazy indeed. You buying into it or nah?
