The Patriots have plenty of on-field issues that need to be addressed, but there also seems to be some trouble brewing in the locker room.
New England apparently is on the verge of a mutiny.
Evan Lazar of Patriots.com used the word "mutiny" when describing the vibe around the team last week, spilling it on an episode of the "Catch 22" podcast he does alongside The Sports Hub's Alex Barth on Thursday.
"They're teetering on a mutiny in that locker room," Lazar reportedly said, as shared by NBC Sports Boston's Trenni Casey. "I was in that locker room on Sunday, the defense is mad at the defense, the offense is mad at the offense.
"You have young receivers who are throwing tantrums … at what point in time do some of these guys say to themselves, 'Why am I out there getting my butt kicked and Drake can't? Why am I going out there with a quarterback that can't get me the football when we have a Ferrari back in the garage?"
The Patriots have since removed the episode from YouTube. Bernd Buchmasser of PatsPulpit did point out that the podcast episode is still available on the team's website, though the quote about a mutiny was edited out.
Lazar addressed his comments in an appearance on 98.5 The Sports Hub on Thursday, walking back what he's previously said and chalking it up to some good olé' fashioned arguing.
"You know (Alex) Barth pretty well as well as I do," Lazar told The Sports Hub’s Joe Murray. “Him and I can get into some pretty heated debates and arguments over things even off the air sometimes as we tend to do. I’ll fully admit that I got a little carried away on the podcast.
"I'm sure you've been there, Joe, yourself just in the heat of the moment. The word I used -- mutiny -- there's no mutiny in the Patriots locker room. Like I said, I got carried away and that was my bad. That's not what was going on."
The Patriots obviously felt some sort of way about the comments, but it's unlikely that they lead to anything more than having to embarrassingly remove an episode of their own podcast from YouTube. If they lose to a severely-undermanned Miami Dolphins squad on Sunday? We might actually have a mutiny to talk about.
