Posted by Teddy Panos, Sun Staff
Time to put up or shut up for former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh.
The NFL has announced that Walsh will meet with Commissioner Roger Goodell on May 13th and will hand over all materials pertaining to, and belonging to, the New England Patriots. For their part, the Pats have guaranteed that Walsh will not be sued. Senator Arlen “I don’t have anything more important to do” Specter will also meet with Walsh at some point after the Commissioner chats with him. The Patriots released the following statement today:
The New England Patriots are pleased to learn that Matt Walsh is finally willing to come forward to meet with the NFL. We are eagerly anticipating his honest disclosures to Commissioner Goodell next month and the return of all the materials he took during his time of employment. We fully expect this meeting to conclude the league’s investigation into a damaging and false allegation that was originally levied against the team on the day before this year’s Super Bowl. It is important to note that there has never been a confidentiality agreement restricting Matt Walsh and no legal protections were ever necessary for him to speak to the NFL, to media outlets or to anyone else regarding his employment with the Patriots. He demanded to be released from responsibility for his statements, and after a frustrating and lengthy negotiation period, a settlement has finally been reached. Walsh has been granted a significant number of privileges through this agreement, none of which the Patriots or the NFL were obligated to give. At all times, we cooperated fully with the league’s investigation and stand by our initial public statement from Saturday, Feb. 2, 2008: “The suggestion that the New England Patriots recorded the St. Louis Rams’ walkthrough on the day before Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 is absolutely false.” The Patriots’ organizational focus at this time is on the NFL Draft and preparing for what we hope will be an exciting 2008 season. We will have no further comments regarding Matt Walsh at this time.
So sit tight…in a couple of weeks, we should finally know whether there is one more hammer waiting to drop on Bill Belichick. Either that or we can finally move on from this garbage and get back to the business for talking about football games.