NFL says 'Patriots had nothing to do with' communications outage on day Bill Belichick stews

It's already been a long year for the New England Patriots, but they apparently will not be the subject of another investigation despite the Pittsburgh Steelers' communication issues Thursday night at Gillette Stadium in the NFL's regular-season kickoff game.

Early Friday evening, a league spokesman released a statement that read: "Based on our review to date, we believe that the audio interference on Steelers’ headsets last night was entirely attributable to an electrical issue made worse by the inclement weather; that it involved no manipulation by any individual; and that the Patriots had nothing to do with it. The issue was promptly resolved and there were no further problems for the remainder of the game. We will continue to review the matter to determine if there are technical steps that can be taken to avoid similar problems from occurring in other games."

Despite coach Mike Tomlin's obvious displeasure Thursday, the Steelers told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday that they would not file a formal complaint to the league.

"We have provided information to NFL representatives regarding issues that occurred Thursday night at Gillette Stadium with our coach-to-coach headset communications system. The problem was addressed during the game and we did not have further problems in the second half. We did not file a formal complaint, nor do we plan to do so," Steelers spokesman Burt Lauten wrote in an e-mail, contradicting an earlier report from Yahoo!

The latest controversy dogging the Patriots had clearly annoyed coach Bill Belichick by Friday morning. He panned the hubbub and flurry of reports in a conference call.

"It’s not an uncommon problem," he said. "We ended up having to signal a couple our plays offensively, and we couldn’t get them in. We look at it as something you have to be ready for every week, and we practice it. Home, away — I don’t really think there is any common denominator on that.

"I’d just say, kind of tying this in with a couple things from last week or earlier in the week, I just think overall it’s kind of sad, really, to see some stories written that obviously have an agenda to them with misinformation and anonymous-type comments and writing about warm drinks and trash cans and stuff like that. I think it’s just sad commentary and it’s gone to a pretty low level. It’s sunk pretty deep."

The Steelers' website still suggested the situation had rather shady circumstances.

"This is the kind of stuff that happens to the visiting team in Gillette Stadium all the time. From the start of the game through the opening 14 minutes of the first quarter, the Steelers’ coaches’ headsets were receiving the Patriots Radio Network broadcast of the game. The broadcast was so loud that the Steelers coaches were unable to communicate, and the NFL rule is that if one team’s headsets are not working the other team is supposed to be forced to take their headsets off. It’s what the NFL calls the Equity Rule," wrote Bob Labriola of steelers.com before dropping more.

"Strangely enough, whenever an NFL representative proceeded to the New England sideline to shut down their headsets, the Steelers headsets cleared. Then as the representative walked away from the New England sideline, the Steelers’ headsets again started to receive the Patriots game broadcast."

After the game, Tomlin said communication outages at Gillette are "always the case."

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