The Patriots' optical illusion trick is gone, and nobody on the right noticed
The NFL's first week of 2026 produced three suspension-track fines, a rule banning the Patriots' videoboard kicker-confusion tactic, and a fine for 49ers TE Jake Tonges on the same play he tore his MCL. Pro Football Talk carried most of the specifics. The story is thin by design: three center-left outlets covered it, right-leaning sports media didn't, and the gaps are more logistical than ideological.
NFL fines players for safety fouls and celebrations; rule changes on videoboard displays during kicks
3 sources · hover a dot to see coverage
What happened
Following Week 1 of the 2026 NFL season, the league issued fines for three player-safety fouls that count toward possible suspensions under the NFL's discipline ladder. Packers linebacker Lukas Van Ness was fined for a hit on Carson Wentz; no fine was issued for his involvement in the play that gave Vikings quarterback Kyler Murray a concussion. 49ers tight end Jake Tonges was fined for a leg whip on the same play he suffered a torn MCL. Stefon Diggs was fined for a touchdown celebration that drew a penalty on the Washington Commanders at a critical game moment. Separately, the NFL changed its videoboard rules to ban the New England Patriots' longstanding tactic of displaying imagery designed to create an optical illusion for opposing kickers. Three outlets covered the story.
PFT did the work; everyone else filed one piece
Pro Football Talk published four separate items on this story: the three suspension-track fines as a group, then individual pieces on Van Ness, Tonges, and the Patriots videoboard rule. That granularity matters for the Van Ness situation specifically. PFT reported that Van Ness was fined for the hit on Wentz but not for the play involving Murray's concussion, a distinction that disappears entirely if you only read the aggregated fine notice. ESPN and Bleacher Report each filed one item, ESPN on the videoboard rule change and Bleacher Report on the Diggs celebration fine.
The Diggs fine got a headline; the Murray concussion fine did not
Bleacher Report led with Diggs because the celebration-to-penalty chain has a narrative arc: a player's end-zone behavior directly cost his team field position. The Van Ness/Murray situation is harder to package. Murray got a concussion. Van Ness was not fined for it. The NFL's explanation for that non-fine appears only in PFT's reporting and is absent from Bleacher Report's coverage entirely. The Diggs item is the more shareable story. The Van Ness item is the more consequential one.
What one side told you that the other didn't
Murray got a concussion. The fine went elsewhere.
PFT reported that Lukas Van Ness was involved in the Week 1 play that ended with Kyler Murray concussed, then was fined only for a separate hit on Carson Wentz. The NFL issued no fine for the Murray play. That asymmetry, a concussion with no discipline attached, appears only in PFT's standalone item. Bleacher Report and ESPN did not report it. The NFL's rationale for the non-fine is the detail most worth knowing, and it ran in exactly one place.
Tonges was fined for a foul on the play that ended his season.
The 49ers tight end tore his MCL and, in the same sequence, committed a leg whip that drew a fine. PFT reported both facts together. No other outlet in this group covered it. The league fining a player for a penalty on the play that injured him is the kind of detail that generates real reaction when it surfaces, and so far it has surfaced in one item on one outlet.
Right-leaning sports outlets filed nothing on any of this.
The absence here is probably bandwidth, not politics: NFL discipline notes are a niche beat, and the story broke across multiple short items rather than one big news event. But the Patriots videoboard rule change is the kind of story that travels, and it didn't reach any right-leaning outlet in this group. If the coverage expands, watch whether the framing on the Patriots tactic shifts from 'gamesmanship banned' to 'league overreach.'
What to watch
The Van Ness/Murray non-fine is the item most likely to draw a formal response. If the NFLPA files a grievance or Murray's camp comments publicly before the Week 2 game, expect the concussion-with-no-discipline angle to break into wider coverage. That would be the moment to check whether the framing lands on player safety or on the league's inconsistency.
This kind of gap — where one side reports a fact and the other doesn’t mention it — shows up in about 40% of major stories.