Report: Bengals Employee Claims Patriots Had Camera Aimed At Bengals' Sideline for 1st Quarter
On Monday afternoon, it was reported that the NFL was investigating the New England Patriots for allegedly filming the Cincinnati Bengals' play calls from the press box during their game against the Cleveland Browns, per Dianna Russini of ESPN. While the Patriots claimed they were filming in the press box for their "Do Your Job" series, one Bengals employee claims New England's video cameras weren't just filming a Patriots advance scout.
According to Russini, a source shared with her that a Bengals employee was watching the Patriots videographer/cameraman who identified himself as a Robert Kraft employee. That Cincinnati employee kept an eye on the Kraft employee's monitor, and saw that the shot was of the Bengals' coaches and staff on the sideline for the entire first quarter of Sunday's game.
Once that was seen, the Bengals employee notified media relations, who then proceeded to have Bengals security interview the Kraft videographer, which was also taped. The Kraft cameraman asked if they could just delete the footage and it all be forgotten.
A source also told Russini that a guy was interviewing a Patriots pro scout before the game, but that was over when the game started.
Patriots head coach Bill Belichick during his weekly interview on WEEI's afternoon show "OMF" was asked about this entire situation, and explained that even though he has zero involvement with the Kraft video production crew, he believes, to the best of his knowledge, that his football team is "100 percent" in compliance with any and all NFL rules.
“Yeah, 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.
"Again, from a football standpoint we absolutely know what the rules are and we are 100 percent in compliance to the best of my knowledge of every single rule that we’re responsible for. What another part of the organization does or doesn’t do as part of their, whether it is game presentation or TV shows, I have no idea what that is.”
