Since he retired from the NFL, former New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi has been one of the many studio analysts working for ESPN. However, with the way he’s speaking about the NFL, Deflategate and even his employer, that might not be the case for much longer.
Speaking on Boston’s WEEI this week, Bruschi discussed the cheating accusations against the Patriots and the latest report on Spygate and Deflategate from ESPN’s Outside the Lines. The former linebacker minced no words and started swinging the ax from the get go.
“I refuse to be brainwashed by the NFL,” he said. “Based on so many reports and so many league sources and so many unnamed sources that have said this and then said that that just aren’t true. I refuse to be brainwashed by what they release or what they say through unnamed sources. What do I say to Patriots fans? I say also refuse to be brainwashed, alright? Believe what you see on the screen. When you see them win, when you see them make plays, when you see them win the Super Bowl last year, that’s what you need to believe.”
Bruschi who played on the Patriots’ three Super Bowl-winning teams during the Spygate era says each of the wins was legitimate:
“I played during the time and I knew what it was like in that locker room, and a lot of times Spygate is brought up and the accusations of cheating is always brought up. I say this over and over again: I’m very secure in the winning that we had. I’m very secure in how we won and what work was put in and what the players did. I know what I sacrificed to continue playing for that one organization for 13 years. I know what went in, so I’m very secure with all our success.”
This certainly doesn’t tote the ESPN line about the Patriots. Boston Sports Media’s Bruce Allen notes that Bruschi hasn’t been making appearances on the Worldwide Leader either due to his refusal to go against his team or because ESPN doesn’t want him on:
I’ve heard rumblings this summer that Tedy Bruschi has been furious at ESPN, and his noticeable absence from the airwaves during the Federal Court case was no coincidence. Either he refused to come on the air and spout the company lines, or they didn’t want to put him on because they knew he’d be critical of the league. Even when Bruschi returned last week, Bob Ley kept openly questioning Bruschi’s ability to be objective when talking about Tom Brady and the Patriots.
Yes, ESPN was worried about objectivity.
Bruschi told WEEI that he’s “tired of having to defend all the time” the team against the accusations and teams lost because they were lacking focus and concentration on the game.
Now whether this is the beginning of the end of Bruschi on ESPN, time will tell, but for now, it appears that he’s angry at the network and that may spell doom for his career there.
[WEEI]
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