Patriots Expected to Be Disciplined for Committing Game-Day Violation

The New England Patriots are reportedly expected to face disciplinary action after filming the Cincinnati Bengals’ sideline in December, according to reports.

NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported Saturday that the NFL’s investigation concluded that the Pats did indeed commit a game-day violation by taping the team and are expected to face some sort of penalty for doing so. It’s still unclear if the football operations department was involved.

“The Patriots did, in fact, commit a game-day violation and they are expected to be disciplined for taping the #Bengals sidelines,” he tweeted, citing sources. “What’s not clear is if there is a link back to football operations, as not all security reports are back to the NFL offices.”

ESPN’s Adam Schefter also tweeted about the case. “Patriots are expected to be disciplined for acknowledged gameday video violations in Cincinnati, per league sources,” he tweeted. “Discipline likely to come in the next two weeks, but not all security reports back to NFL yet.”

The NFL hasn’t quite wrapped the investigation yet. Bill Belichick and his coaching staff were reportedly cleared of any wrongdoing earlier this week in relation to the Bengals filming incident.

“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,” the Patriots head coach 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.”