To my fellow sports fans, I caution you: for roughly 10 years, the NFL has employed a PR firm with a very aggressive social media arm, which infiltrates message board online in order to "confuse the message" with regards to the Patriots—but more specifically, the nature of their “cheating”. This was done in an effort to calm the growing feeling of discontent from 31 of the 32 fan bases in the league.
This is seen most egregiously on sites that have a direct financial stake in the league, such as PFT, an arm of NBC, which has a multi billion dollar broadcasting deal with the league. The tactics used there are for more blatant, such as deleting "negative" or "conspiratorial" posts. On boards such as this, or message boards devoted to teams, their general aim is to create an 80/20:20/80 split. What this means is that for every 10 "accounts" that are created, 8 are sports fans in general, with no particular rooting interest (or a clearly neutral interest, such as being an Eagles fan); and 2 are Patriots fans. In both of those accounts, 80 percent of their posts are to be dismissive, and 20% inflammatory.
This was done to both a) avoid a Congressional hearing following spygate, and b) create the image that fanbases around the league are content with the way the punishment process was conducted with the Patriots. Unfortunately for fans of 31/32 teams, the league determined in 2007 that the offenses committed by the Patriots were egregious enough to effectively negate their accomplishments from this millennium. However, that would have resulted in TREMENDOUS class action lawsuits from fans, as we would have been entitled to retribution for everything from ticket sales/concessions, to direcTV bills—don’t even get me started on Vegas.
This will be Beliceck and Brady’s last year in New England, and Beliceck is going to “retire” at the end of this season. Please know that many of the posters that you argue with online are dummy accounts being handled by a New York based PR firm, that outsources their work to offices across the country. A simple “you mad” icon after this is sufficient to negate this entire post in the minds of most people that read this day in and day out, but I encourage you to open your third eye wide and realize what actions a multi multi billion dollar company might take to both protect themselves from lawsuits, and continuously ensure year over year profit margins.