The Patriots are in Damage Control Mode Over Their Own Reporter's Use of 'Teetering on a Mutiny'

Boston Globe. Getty Images.

I'm going to be right up front with you and say I regret having to even cover this story. I look around me and see the Barstool Mets guys:

… Phillies fans and Falcons fans having this huge night of pure, undiluted joy and I envy them. I'd much rather be back in that place a few years ago where that was the almost weekly experience of every Patriots fan. But we have to take reality on reality's terms. That ship sailed a long time ago, and we're in Year 5 of a rebuild with no end currently in sight. 

Instead, we're in one of those situations where people you like and root for are having issues. And while I'd rather stay out of it and just focus on the Dolphins in freefall or Rashee Rice's antics or UFOs or whatever, I have a job to do. An unsworn duty. A fiduciary responsibility to the nice people who pay the mortgage at Stately Thornton Manor to talk about this. 

Late yesterday it came out that Patriots.com's Evan Lazar used the word "mutiny" on the team podcast he co-hosts. And rather than just rely on a couple of Tweets repeating it, I decided to watch the actual show and get the context. Then this happened:

It's still taken down off YouTube. Go to that channel and the most recent video is from September 25th and titled "3 Up/Down from the Jets Loss, Key Matchups to Watch Against the 49ers."

Someone did manage to pull the relevant part of the conversation and sent it to me:

Which I used as the centerpiece of a typically masterful blog, all full of insight, humor, analysis and references to submarine movies:

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The upshot of which is that, while Lazar did use those words, he wasn't implying an actual mutiny. In the sense that players are planning to rise up against the coaches and sail off to Tahiti or whatever. He was describing a general sense of frustration in the locker room. And speculating that players aren't going to want to keep taking a beating every Sunday while Drake Maye stays protected on the bench. That Maye's teammates growing anxious to see him play and turn this season around.

And I think I speak for most Patriots fans when I say, welcome to the club. We're having jackets made. 

Lost in the fact everyone, myself included, are drilling down into the word "mutiny" is over an hour of great observations. How the Patriots defense is under-performing, even if you take into account they're not missing four of their six best players. Lazar makes an excellent point about how they're using a base defense (four defensive backs) and zone coverage more than they have in forever. How they're defensive ends are losing containment, selling out on the pass rush and allowing quarterbacks to escape the pocket in a way that on Bill Belichick's watch meant a benching. And how Belichick would've stuck with a nickel D in San Francisco and dared Kyle Shanahan to keep running against him, instead of allowing Brock Purdy to shred them all game. 

But when you throw in a sentence-enhancing buzzword to make your point, no one's going to hear anything else. It's like when you're coaching kids and you let a bad word slip, that's all they focus on. Everything else you said becomes white noise. So the best pep talk ever delivered just becomes, "Blah bitty blah kick some ass blah blah blah" and they all just start giggling. Your point is lost.

This post is not about that, it's about the Patriots reaction to it. Somewhere up on the chain of command it was decided not to leave well enough alone and let it lie. First there was the removal of the video from YouTube. Then Lazar appeared on The Sports Hub to clarify:

And then apparently put the audio on the internet, but with the offending turn of a phrase edited out:

On a lot of levels, you can sympathize with the organization and the decision to pour water on this flame before it spreads. This has never been the easiest team in sports to do PR for. And I can confirm they do a hell of job at accommodating everyone from the most professional journo to the lowliest, most uneducated blogger. 

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This is a franchise that even during the very best of times was constantly under attack from enemies foreign and domestic. It's been siege warfare at One Patriots Place almost from the moment they laid the first bricks. Mr. Kraft made the boldest, riskiest move since he decided to buy the team when he made a coaching change. And for all involved, the first month has been turned into a disaster. So you can relate to the desire to not let a tempest go Category 5 because it's coming from someone on the payroll.

But there's a phenomenon that happens virtually any time you try hard to make it so people don't pay attention to something. From Wikipedia:

The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information. The effect is named for American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attorney attempted  in 2003 to suppress the publication of a photograph showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, taken to document coastal erosion in California, inadvertently drawing far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph. The effect exemplifies psychological reactance, a kind of 'reverse psychology' effect, in which the attempt to hide information instead makes it more interesting to seek out and  propagate

Taking down the video and editing the audio is, with all due respect, the very definition of The Streisand Effect. And so far today, the Boston sports media is in a feeding feeding frenzy over it. As well they should be. It's a juicy story, given infinitely more juice by the fact someone in charge of content is trying to cover it up. They would've been better off just taking the L and moving on to the next major PR hit. 

This story will burn hot for a day or two, then be forgotten with most of the other controversies this team has weathered. What's way more important - and shouldn't be lost in all this - is how long Patriots players will keep getting their asses handed to them on the field before the coaches have no choice but to switch to Drake Maye. That controversy will be with us a while.