The stories about headset issues at Gillette Stadium over the years are legion -- and the list of confirmed victims, evidently, continually growing.
In a story from the Washington Post's Adam Kilgore exploring the difficulties teams have had over the years wrangling with the Patriots' mystique in playoff games -- a story too fittingly titled "Dead headsets, paranoia, 'chasing ghosts': What it's like to face Bill Belichick in playoffs" -- former Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback David Garrard expanded on the legendarily faulty headset problems visitors to Foxborough have faced over the years, saying that it happened every time:
Garrard said the Jaguars would prepare for coaches' headsets suddenly malfunctioning. They practiced using hand signals or running substitutes in from the sideline to call plays, and Garrard learned 10 plays he could call at the line of scrimmage if he lost contact with coaches.
"Every time we played in New England, whether it was the playoffs or regular season or preseason, the headphones always went off -- always," Garrard said. "It's automatic."
That would include Garrard's lone playoff start against Tom Brady, the 2007 AFC divisional round game in Foxborough, a contest won 31-20 by the Patriots coming off the first 16-0 regular season in NFL history. New England went on to lose in Super Bowl XLII that season, of course, in one of the biggest championship game upsets of all-time. Garrard also came in to relieve Byron Leftwich in the Jags' 2005 Wild Card round loss to New England.
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