While details are still murky regarding the strangeness surrounding a New England Patriots video crew and the Cincinnati Bengals, new reporting suggests that something fishy may have been going on.
According to ESPN’s Dianna Russini, a Bengals employee observing the Patriots videographer noted that the cameraman recorded the Cincinnati sideline for the entire first quarter during Sunday’s game.
At that point, the Bengals alerted security, who interviewed the cameraman. He asked if he could simply delete the footage.
A source tells me a Bengals employee was watching the videographer/cameraman who identified himself as a Robert Kraft employee. The Bengals employee kept an eye on that monitor, the shot was of the Bengals coaches and staff on the sidelines for the entire 1st quarter.
— Dianna (@diannaESPN) December 9, 2019
the Bengals employee flagged media relations. Bengals security then interviewed the Kraft videographer. This was also taped. The cameraman asked if they could just delete the footage and it all be forgotten per sources
— Dianna (@diannaESPN) December 9, 2019
Sources say there was a guy interviewing a Patriots pro scout before the game but that was over when the game started.
— Dianna (@diannaESPN) December 9, 2019
It has been reported that the Patriots’ crew was simply doing work for an episode of the team’s in-house “Do Your Job” series that was profiling one of their pro scouts. That doesn’t really explain why they’d need a camera fixated on the Cincinnati sideline, especially with their upcoming game against the Bengals. The most cynical explanation would be that the Patriots exploited the credential process to spy on the Bengals, but it seems hard to believe they would be that brazen.
The reality? Rival teams do not trust the Patriots. Something like this is fertile ground for conspiracy theories, and those are going to continue until we get a bit more clarity about what happened here.
