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4 o'clock every Friday, Chris Gassar, the Boston Globe, joins us. He is now in studio. Jim Murray's alongside Marshall Hook here to give us headlines. We'll get back to your calls here momentarily. We were just saying at the top of the hour, though, Chris. We're two weeks out now, basically, from the Super Bowl. Okay, two weeks out.

Do you have any greater clarification on what happened with Malcolm Butler than you did in the immediate aftermath of the game? Yeah, come on, Scoops. Tell us. No, no, I don't have any greater clarification on what happened. I don't. I mean, I think everybody's trying to get it, trying to figure out what went on. And what's strange about it to me,

and I'm not saying that Malcolm Butler is this caliber of player, because he's clearly not.

But let's say it was like an off-the-field thing. Let's say it was something, you know, to do with why he didn't fly with the team to Minneapolis. You know, we had the flu, or so they said, on Monday. You know, that type of thing, to me, wouldn't rise to the level of benching the guy. And being in Minnesota, he was really upbeat on Wednesday and Thursday, the last couple of days of media availability. So I feel like that's the type of thing where they would have told them earlier in the week, hey, you know, whatever happened here, you didn't make this flight, you're being punished.

And even if you were to do something like that, I always go back to this. I'm like, this is Bill Belichick. This guy coach Lawrence Taylor. Like, they weren't even sure this guy was going to show up for the games. you know, never mind being on team flights and all this other stuff. And again, clearly Malcolm Butler is nowhere

near the player that Lawrence Taylor was. But Bill in the past has put up with a lot of guys who

were sort of pains in the rear and a little unreliable away from the field. But if you can play,

you'll get to play. So it had to be something else that was done. And I don't buy the reason

that they gave that it was strictly football. Because it was strictly football, halfway through that game, they would have looked at it and said, okay, this was what the original game plan was, much like Super Bowl 51, where the original game plan was, hey, let's pound the Garrett Blunt. Oh, crap, that's not working and we're down. Let's change it. They would have changed the original game plan and the strictly football reasons he was benched and put him in the game. Yeah, because strictly on a football basis, Jordan Richards and Johnson-Badamosey were not working. You would have fixed that, and for whatever reason he decided not to. So, Chris, when you say it's not football, what do you get in that? Because I'm unclear as to do you think it was disciplinary or do you think it was personal?

It could have been either one of those. it's not football, what are you getting at? Because I'm unclear as to, do you think it was disciplinary or do you think it was personal?

It could have been either one of those two.

But I would lean more in that direction than football.

Because I think if it's disciplinary for something sort of like, you know, off the field,

lack of judgment or not being punctual or reliable or giving some ridiculous

excuse for why you can't show up to work.

You know, that's the type of thing where I think you notify the player in advance what's

going on.

That's not the type of thing to me where Bill would wait four days later, five days later,

and then say, hey, you know, what were you

doing Sunday night that you couldn't make our flight to Minneapolis with the rest of the team,

and then tell him the day of the Super Bowl, yeah, you're not starting because of that.

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