The New England Patriots are expected to face discipline from the league for the incident involving the Cincinnati Bengals in December.
The team, reportedly, was caught filming the Bengals’ sideline and the NFL’s investigation has now confirmed the Patriots committed a game-day violation, according to NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport.
“The #Patriots did, in fact, commit a game-day violation and they are expected to be disciplined for taping the #Bengals sidelines.. What’s not clear is if there is a link back to football operations, as not all security reports are back to the NFL offices,” Rapoport tweeted.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter also reported similar sentiments: “Patriots are expected to be disciplined for acknowledged gameday video violations in Cincinnati, per league sources. Discipline likely to come in the next two weeks, but not all security reports back to NFL yet.”
Pats head coach Bill Belicheck commented on the reports soon after: “I heard about this and evidently this is our production people on the TV show that were there and I have absolutely nothing to do, we have absolutely nothing to do with anything that they produce or direct or shoot,” he said. “I have never even seen any of their tapes or anything else. This is something that we 100 percent have zero involvement with. This is something you’d have to talk to the production people about and what they were doing, or whatever it was. We have never seen anything that they’ve shot, other than what has come down on TV.”
The Patriots play against the Titans Saturday night for the Wild Card round of the playoffs.