Cheatriots Again? Patriots Ex-Player Claims Extra Pay
By Brian Miller
While scrolling the information provided over at ArrowheadAddict this morning regarding our weekends game with the Chiefs, I came across something they caught and frankly I missed…of course I missed a lot this week as I was severely under the weather. I still found it interesting and frankly while I love the concept of riling up the team, something else stuck a little bit of a nerve. The Patriots again with the cheating?
According to the Dayton Daily news, through AA, Chad Eaton a former New England Patriot and Cleveland Brown dropped this little nugget of information the other day.
"“If practice was going slow, he’d look at me and just say, ‘It’s time,’” Eaton said. “He wanted me to get on somebody’s [case] and start a little fight. I was known for that and it paid off on Fridays. There’d always be some extra money in my locker. Practice players don’t make much, so I really appreciated it.”"
As I stated, I could care less if Bill Belichick is getting his players panties in a bunch by asking a practice squad player to maybe toss a few punches to get the veterans or 53 man team fired up to get some emotion going. My question is the extra pay in the locker on Friday’s? If I’m not mistaken that is a major violation of NFL rules regarding salary cap limitations.
Now, I’m sure that the NFL will turn the other way as they always do and to that I say whatever, it’s obvious that the Patriots can do no wrong and this little incident surely won’t garner enough widespread attention to launch an inquiry it may not even make a mark on your mind and instead pass simply as a “so what, who cares” trivial piece of information. It defines however just how far Bill Belichick will go to win at this game and while a Chad Eaton was nothing more than a practice squad player it makes you wonder what else the Patriots do to keep so competitive especially given their consistent misses in the draft. I’m just throwing that out there.
Either way, in the grand scheme of things it likely doesn’t mean a thing to the NFL or to anyone else. It just goes to express that Belichick finds ways to circumvent the rules.