NBC/NFL
The Sunday Night Football game between the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots was a disaster for pretty much everyone: for the Falcons, for fans of good football, for people who bet the over, for the camera crews — everyone. Point is, the much-hyped Super Bowl rematch between the Falcons and Patriots was almost unwatchable for everyone involved and we mean that both figuratively and literally.
In case you didn’t notice or give a shit, Gilette Stadium was covered in a high-key thicc layer of smoke/fog/smog/smug during last night’s game, and none other than Julio Jones just thought it was a little too coincidental, given the high-flying, deep shot nature of the Falcons offense.
via CBS Boston:
“It didn’t affect me, but it’s crazy though, like, they score and they shoot fireworks off and then it sits high, kind of in the stadium,” Jones told CBS Boston. “So it’s kind of hard, like, if you do get behind, like how can you throw deep balls and things like that, because it’s foggy? I mean, it didn’t affect us at all though. They were just the better team tonight.”
To Julio’s credit, while he does not make excuses for the Falcons’ pitiful 7-point outing, he does raise a couple of interesting and simple points.
The first is about the fireworks the Patriots light off after they score, a tradition they’ve had for as long as I’ve watched football. Yes, the Patriots have been doing this forever, but never have I seen it affect the field this much. As a Jets fan, I watch at least one Patriots home game a year, and that’s not even counting all of the times they’re featured in primetime. So while the smoke itself is nothing new, the severity of it was.
The second point he makes is a scientific one (kind of) but not worded as accurately as it could have been. What Jones says is “how can you throw deep balls” in that kind of fog, but what he should be asking is “how do you see deep balls” in that kind of fog. Now, while I’m no scientist, I would theorize finding, tracking, and catching a 50-yard-pass through heavy smoke is much more difficult than catching it without said heavy smoke. That, folks, is just science.
So, the question remains, did the Patriots mess around with their cannons (gunpowder, etc) to create more prominent smoke? Probably not. But, because they’re the New England Patriots, they’ve lost the benefit of the doubt, so we definitely won’t be giving it to them.
And thus begins #SmokeGate2017.
