You’ve never going to believe this but it appears that Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots have violated NFL rules.
While the Patriots were scheduled to have their first voluntary team activities available to the media on Thursday, they canceled without providing much information. Turns out, it wasn’t their call.
Per ESPN’s Mike Reiss, the NFL stripped New England of two OTA practices over off-season rules violations.
“The Patriots are losing two days of voluntary organized team activities due to a violation of offseason rules, per league sources,” wrote Reiss. “That explains the team’s announcement about Thursday’s practice being called off. Another OTA next week has also been taken away.”
It’s not entirely uncommon for NFL teams to get hit with these kinds of violations but there’s something about the Patriots doing it that brought out a lot of NFL folks who have gotten used to hearing about how Belichick’s team bent or broke the rules over the years.
— MikeBTeeVee (@Mike_Brindisi) May 25, 2023
The Patriots broke NFL rules https://t.co/H7Xt5nbekS pic.twitter.com/AYiHFDDvw5
— Travis Rockhold (@TravisRockhold) May 25, 2023
The multiple number of times the Patriots have been caught breaking the rules is still probably way less than the times they’ve broken the rules and haven’t been caught https://t.co/Txj1nPSbjf
— Adam Patrick (@adampatrickNFL) May 25, 2023
Belichick probably isn’t too happy about losing the two practices given that the Patriots are coming off an 8-9 season and have serious questions at the quarterback position. We’d wonder what he’s going to say to reporters about this but chances are he’ll just refuse to comment, as is his nature.
