NFL Rumors: Did the New England Patriots’ Clock Operator Cheat the New York Jets?

By Jon Presser @metsjetsnets88 on October 23, 2012

Did the New England Patriots get a gift from their home stadium’s clock operator late in their eventual win against the New York Jets? Video evidence appears to indicate that they may have.

In the play pictured above, Patriots kick returner Devin McCourty fumbled the football on a kickoff return right around the 2-minute warning in the fourth quarter and the Jets recovered it to regain possession.

But watch closely in the video below as the game clock curiously stops running at exactly 2:01, roughly a second or two before the play was blown dead by the referees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVWWRl932RM

Why is this significant? Because stopping the clock at exactly 2:01 meant that the clock would stop again after the Jets’ 1st down play, essentially giving New England an extra timeout because of the 2-minute warning.

Now, I’m not saying that the clock error is the reason the Jets lost the game. The Jets did plenty to beat themselves on Sunday and they let the game slip away, but it’s hard to ignore something like this.

The Patriots have always done everything they can to bend the rules, or outright break them, and this curiously convenient timekeeping “error” just seems like more of the same.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Patriots haven’t won the Super Bowl since their blatant cheating was put to a stop. Now that everything’s fair and square, the Patriots look somewhat mortal. Yet, this clown stuff still goes on.

The Jets walk away with a loss in Week 7 and they made enough mistakes to earn that L. That’s a fair criticism.

It’s just ridiculous that the Patriots need to resort to schoolyard tactics like prematurely stopping the clock to save a timeout. This is the NFL, for crying out loud.

Patriots apologists will dismiss this as just a simple conspiracy theory. They’ll convince themselves that the clock was stopped at the proper time when it’s obvious that it wasn’t. Or that it was just an innocent mistake. Of course!

Bottom line, it’s bush league. But what goes around, comes around. Karma will find the Patriots soon enough.

 

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Jon Presser is www.RantSports.com’s New York Jets Lead Columnist 
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