In clear and unequivocal terms, Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis has denied the ESPN report that he had his box in the Superdome wired so he could eavesdrop on opposing coaches during games.
“This report on ESPN is absolutely false,” Loomis wrote in an email to FOXSports.com NFL insider Jay Glazer. “I have a monitor in front of me in my booth that provides the league-issued stats for the game. I have a small TV with the network broadcast and I have an earpiece to listen to the WWL-AM radio (flagship broadcaster) game broadcast.
“To think I am sitting in there listening and actually and/or doing something with the offensive and defensive play calls of the opposing teams makes this story and the unnamed sources that provided the false information that much less credible. It just didn’t happen.”
It’s hard to find any middle ground between what ESPN reported and what Loomis says, which matches the Saints’ statement that the report was 1,000 percent false, former Saints coach Jim Haslett’s statement that he never saw any indication that Loomis ever did anything of the sort, and other Saints officials who said they sat with Loomis during games and never saw or heard anything to suggest he was listening in on opposing coaches. Either Loomis is lying or the ESPN report is wrong.