The Patriots had a reputation for cheating before Thursday night's NFL opener against the Steelers -- which ESPN.com wrote about this week -- and that's probably not going to change much after the game.
According to NBC's broadcast, the headsets used by the Steelers coaching staff malfunctioned at some point early in the first quarter. Technically, the headsets still worked, the Steelers coaches just couldn't hear each other.
"We were told a couple of minutes ago that [the Steelers coaches] were getting the Patriots' radio broadcast in their headsets," Al Michaels said during the NBC broadcast.
NBC colleague Cris Collinsworth then brought up the Patriots reputation.
"Every team that I know of has some story about what happens to them in this stadium and that’'s not going to help that they’re getting those radio signals in their headset," Collinsworth said.
The headset malfunction happened during the first quarter, but had been fixed by the time the quarter ended.
*deactivate Steelers headsets* pic.twitter.com/inVxQSCoJV
— dafoomie (@dafoomie) September 11, 2015
According to NBC's Michele Tafoya, once the Steelers headsets went down, "the Patriots' coach-to-coach headsets were shut off" to level the playing field.
By the way, if the headsets were malfunctioning, then it was the NFL's fault, not New England's, according to Sirius XM.
Patriots do not control the headsets. The NFL does. I once had a woman from the concession stand in my headsets at Fed EX field. - Mills
— SiriusXM NFL Radio (@SiriusXMNFL) September 11, 2015
To keep tabs on the NFL opener, be sure to check out our game tracker here.
