We had to hear about Deflategate for 18 months, and will likely never truly escape it. Similarly, it seems that “#Cheathawks,” which isn’t even a pun or a good play on words, will be thrown around every time the Seahawks are fined for fighting in practice or seem to have a flag go their way and so on. The reality of it though is that New England and Seattle are successful, so everything gets blown up to much more gigantic proportions than they would be for teams who aren’t winning enough.
Which is why the Falcons and Browns had violations last season that went relatively unnoticed, but if it had happened to the Seahawks or Patriots, probably would have been much bigger stories.
Back in 2015, Atlanta was fined a fifth round pick for pumping fake crowd noise into the Georgia Dome for home games. This is not a “did they, didn’t they?” situation like Deflategate was for so long. They did. The culprit was their director of event marketing, who unfathomably enough happens to be named Roddy White — and no it’s not that Roddy White. (This is perhaps the most shocking realization of the whole thing. How could there be two people in the NFL named Roddy White who also happen to work for the same franchise? This is a definite sign of the matrix.)
The Falcons fired White for the incident, which also caused them to be fined $350,000 and have team president Rich McKay suspended from the NFL’s competition committee for three months.
Owner Arthur Blank said he would take steps to ensure this would never happen again, and I am sure he was sincere, but for certain teams these things are never let go of. Certainly in Seattle, opposing fans will complain that CenturyLink stadium was “designed to make the fans sound louder than they actually are” and that too makes the Seahawks cheaters. They’ve also been accused of pumping in fake crowd noise, which seems to be a more believed story — despite not being more than a rumor — than the factual violation that happened to the Falcons not long ago.
Hopefully Seattle can keep things quiet in the Georgia Dome on Saturday.