Malcolm Butler’s interception in Super Bowl 49 sealed the game for the Patriots. (AP)
It’s one thing to lose the Super Bowl but to get out coached and outdone without your best player and one time super bowl hero had a lot of heads scratching on Sunday and now everyone is Monday morning quarterbacking, one story that is now coming out is that Malcolm Butler didn’t play Sunday night in the team’s loss against the Philadelphia Eagles due to team violations involving women and weed, a former teammate said.
Butler, who played in nearly 98 percent of the Patriots’ defensive snaps during the season, was shockingly benched during the Patriots’ Super Bowl LII loss to the Eagles for what was initially reported as a “perfect storm of issues.”
Belichick didn’t go into the issues and said it was more to it than what he was stating:“I appreciate the question, but it would be a much longer discussion,” Belichick said, according to ESPN. “There are a lot of things that go into that. In the end, the final decision is what I said it was.”
Needless to say Butler didn’t see it that way: “They gave up on me. F—. It is what it is,” Butler said, according to ESPN. “I don’t know what it was. I guess I wasn’t playing good or they didn’t feel comfortable. I don’t know. But I could have changed that game.”
Butler’s former teammate on the Patriots, Brandon Browner, took to Instagram to defend him, writing “he not the first to get caught with weed. … Curfew also meant we are not allowed to have guest especially women.”
He also said the Patriots are a team with players who are given “second chances” — but only for those who are “favorites” of Belichick.
Maybe the issue is the timing of the benching which was just before game time which caught everyone off guard. At some point, maybe the thought was okay he sits for a quarter maybe a half but the whole game? I can tell you this I was in Boston Monday morning and hear the sports talk in the early morning hours while this was fresh and one thing I will say the questions will continue for a long time about this and the smell that Belichick is smelling is bacon …his being cooked.
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