Friday began with news of Patriots linebacker Jalani Tavai tiptoeing around the question of whether Jacoby Brissett or Drake Maye should be playing quarterback for the team, in an appearance on WEEI. It was interesting, but not really earth shattering.
By the end of the day, we tripped over something far more intriguing.
Evan Lazar, who co-hosts a podcast produced by the Patriots, suggested earlier in the week that the team is on the verge of implosion.
“Right now they’re teetering on a mutiny in that locker room,” Lazar said on the team’s Catch 22 podcast. “And I don’t want to be alarmist or like . . . hyperbolic . . . I don’t. But I was in that locker room after the game on Sunday. The defense was mad at the defense. The offense was mad at the offense. You’ve got young receivers who are literally throwing tantrums on film. . . . I said this before and I’ll say it again. You’re at the point now with 52 other guys in that locker room that all watch these two quarterbacks practice every single day, that all know that they drafted Drake Maye third overall. And at what point in time do some of these guys say to themselves, ‘Why am I going out there and getting my butt kicked every single Sunday and Drake can’t? . . . Why am I going out there with a quarterback who can’t get me the football when we have the Ferrari back in the garage that can get me the football?”
And here’s where a team owning and operating a media operation can become a little dicey. As noted by @BabzOnTheMic on Twitter, the self-styled “Leader of Patriot Nation,” the replay of the episode was deleted from both Twitter and YouTube. And the audio of the podcast was deftly edited to remove the “mutiny” comment.
But, wait. There’s more. Lazar, later that same day, went on 98.5 The Sports Hub (the team’s radio flagship) with a mop and a bucket.
“Today, you had some comments on your podcast,” host Joe Murray said. “Would you like to rephrase them here on the show?” (In other words, “Joe, make sure you ask him this question.”)
“I’ll fully admit I got a little carried away today on the podcast,” Lazar said. “The word I used — ‘mutiny’ — like, there’s no mutiny in the Patriots’ locker room. And, like I said, I got carried away, and that was my bad. You know, that’s not what was going on.”
“But I just think the biggest thing that I worry about — and this is just me personally, my opinion — is how long the rest of the players in the locker room are gonna sit there and take their lumps while Drake Maye waits in the wings, and waits for his turn. So, that was just my opinion, and it came out a little stronger than I intended it to.”
Fine. It happens. Especially on podcasts, where conversations can breathe and grow and slip and slide into different nooks and crannies of the brains of the people who are speaking in a more relaxed and loose format.
Besides, Lazar never said there was a “mutiny.” He said “they’re teetering on a mutiny.” Even that was deemed too strong by whoever ordered the Code Red (White and Blue) to expunge the video, tweak the audio, nudge Lazar to recant his words, and in turn make it into a MUCH bigger problem than it previously was.
And, of course, when Lazar explained himself to Murray, Lazar reiterated his concern, with softer words. At some point, the other players on the team will decide they won’t “take their lumps” while “Maye waits in the wings.”
This is the biggest challenge for teams that have in-house media operations. When a reporter or an analyst or a host throw caution to the wind by, you know, telling the truth, what does the team do about it?
Here’s the lesson, for the Patriots and any other team or league with podcasts and video shows. It’s far better to ignore it than it is to try to clumsily make it go away.
In clumsily making it go away, much more attention ends up being focused on the words than ever would have been. And much more credence is given to the notion that perhaps the team is “teetering on a mutiny.” And much more suspicion is aroused as to how else the team or league have tried to control the message by censoring speech — either after the words are uttered, or before.
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