Well, this is awkward. Let’s just hope whoever makes their custom jerseys has better sense than whatever robot handles their social media.

By 10:30 p.m., the team had deleted and apologized for the offensive tweet.

We apologize for the regrettable tweet that went out from our account. Our filtering system failed & we will be more vigilant in the future. — New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 14, 2014

The team had tweeted out to fans earlier today, asking them to retweet a message about their one million followers. Anyone who did so got the image of a Pats jersey with their Twitter handle in place of a name. That led to the incredibly racist tweet, which was deleted about an hour after it first appeared.

We're saying thanks to @patriots' 1million followers w/ custom digital Pats jerseys - RT for yours! #1MillionPatriots pic.twitter.com/u2SfidCb9e — New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 13, 2014

So that’s the context, not that any explanation at all could ever forgive this.


The Internet, for one, was not in a forgiving mood, mercilessly mocking the team for the racist tweet.

Live shot of the @Patriots front office pic.twitter.com/ttGRSl7Kw9 — Jason Sparks (@sparksjls) November 14, 2014

Setting up a sweet automatic 'thank you' system when I hit a mil. What could go wrong? — Michelle Beadle (@MichelleDBeadle) November 14, 2014

Has Roger Goodell suspended the @Patriots twitter feed yet? — Andrew's Head (@AndrewLucksHead) November 14, 2014

BELICHICK: We did some good things with the tweet, some things we could've done better. IHateNiggerss was tough but we're moving on to Indy — Luke O'Neil (@lukeoneil47) November 14, 2014