Peyton Manning and Eli Manning are making a stir in their ESPN2 simulcast of Monday Night Football.
On Monday night’s broadcast, Peyton made a reference to longstanding concerns that the Patriots used enhanced measures to gather information, specifically by bugging the visiting team’s locker room.
“Every time I played against New England, I used to talk to my receivers in the showers,” Peyton said in the companion broadcast to the primary Monday Night Football feed on ESPN, via Jimmy Traina of SI.com. “Don’t talk about a play next to my locker because I know it’s bugged. I know it’s got a hot mic in there. Very strange to see seven guys hanging out in the shower.”
If push comes to shove, Peyton surely will say he was kidding -- just like he did after he once claimed he tanked his preseason cognitive test so that it would be easier to pass the test if/when he suffered a concussion and his remarks created a stir.
Manning may say he was joking, but at some level he wasn’t. Opponents of the Patriots consistently believed the Patriots were cheating. After all, that’s a far better excuse for losing to the Patriots than saying, “They’re better than us and work harder than we do.”