After last night’s 35-34 instant classic win by the Colts over the Pats, New England coach Bill Belichick went to the middle of the field for a very quick handshake with Indy coach Jim Caldwell. Then, Belichick made for the tunnel.
Along the way, a Patriots employee running next to Belichick encountered a cameraman.
And, by all appearances, knocked him on his ass.
As it turns out, the Pats employee was Chief Operating Officer of TeamOps Security (seriously, that’s his title) Mark Briggs, and the dude with the camera works for NBC.
And a league spokesman tells Ian Rapoport of the Boston Herald that the NFL is “looking into” the situation.
Rapoport also reports that the Pats and NBC have been “discussing the incident” and that NBC is “on board” with the tentative conclusion that it was all inadvertent.
We tend to agree. At full speed, it looks like Briggs takes the guy down without missing a beat, like a trained assasin nonchalantly breaking a neck. However, closer review shows that the cameraman, who was trying to get in position for a shot facing Belichick as he left the field, ran out of rope, like a robot with a six-foot extension cord.
It just so happened that Briggs made contact with the cameraman as the camera was yanking the man backward.
Then again, a Chief Operating Officer of TeamOps Security would tend to know how to take advantage of an opportunity to make something look like an accident.