Patriots say 34 texts from Bill Belichick to Aaron Hernandez

We may get only 34 chances to see what emoljis Bill Belichick uses. Last night Andrew Phelan, a laywer representing the team, released a statement which shed light on the texts between coach and player. After reports stating that there were 33 pages of texts between the head coach and the incarcerated former tight end, many news outlets were quick to jump to assumptions and accusations.

One was from the normally reputable Pro Football Talk:

That’s a load of communication between a coach and a player, especially a coach who doesn’t appear to LOL very often.

Now let's compare this to the statement released by the Patriots' representative, which was posted on boston.com:

Earlier this week, a report indicated that an exchange of text messages between the team's head coach and Mr. Hernandez totaled 33 pages. While it is unknown how the texts were printed or displayed, I thought it was important to clarify that during an early investigation conducted by state prosecutors, the team produced a total of 34 text messages (not pages of texts) spanning a period of five months (December 2012 – April 2013) between the head coach and Mr. Hernandez.

Now, there is a large disparity between what both sources are describing, though I wouldn't take either at face value. Pro Football Talk, and other outlets, are reliant on breaking news and making hot takes for people to think of them as a top spot for NFL news. The Patriots are intent on staying as far away from this topic as possible, as no team (except maybe the Baltimore Ravens) wants to be strongly connected to an accused murderer.

I'll say this, regardless of the number of texts, the size of the texts, or if Belichick added a kissie face emolji, what is said in the messages is critical. I personally wouldn't expect much, as the Patriots likely would've let the story die out in the media as opposed to correcting the story to farther draw attention to the issue. We all know how sensitive the Patriots are to media issues, and they certainly wouldn't add logs to the fire if they were worried about information coming to light.

-Bill Stiles
@TheFib0624

Special Thanks to fellow blogger on the site Sully for gathering some of the information used in the article