Patriots coach says Surface tablet issue didn’t affect the outcome of the game

During the AFC championship game Sunday between the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots, Surface tablets suddenly stopped working for the Patriots. As many people on the social media accused Surface tablets for the outage, Microsoft issued a statement saying that it is a network issue. Today, NFL also released a statement on the Surface issue during the game,

“Near the end of the 1st quarter, we experienced an infrastructure issue on the Patriots sideline that impacted still photos for the coaching tablets. The issue was identified as a network cable malfunction and was resolved during the 2nd quarter.  The issue was not caused by the tablets or the software that runs on the tablets. We have experienced no issues with the tablets this season. Any issues were network related.”

Also, answering the question about whether Surface tablet network outage affected their game, Patriots coach Bill Belichick said it wasn’t a big deal for the team.

“It is what it is. It is what it is,” Belichick said. “It’s a pretty common problem. We have ways of playing, working through it. There’s really nothing you can do. It’s not like the headsets where the other side is really affected. You deal with what you deal with, and we’ve had it at home, we’ve had it on the road. Other teams have had it. It’s a fairly common problem. That didn’t affect the outcome of the game. I mean, no way, but it’s just part of it. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t.”