Patriots: writer tweets and deletes wild gaffe about Dont’a Hightower’s fiancee

This New England Patriots beat writer had zero idea how to report the Dont’a Hightower news.

Sure, the Patriots may have lost Dont’a Hightower for the 2020 season, but one of their writers lost a significant shred of his credibility, too. Who’s got it worse?

Michael Giardi, NFL Network’s embedded Patriots coverage leader, tripped over his extra-long tie while attempting to get the Hightower news to the finish line.

After “confirming with his sources” that Hightower was, indeed, choosing to exit stage right on the 2020 season a few weeks after having a baby, he seemed to have forgotten that the star linebacker has a fiancee.

Instead of going the extra mile and making certain he was minding his p’s and q’s, Giardi simply called her his “woman” — and his follow-up wasn’t much better!

Yup, Giardi made the gaffe, then deleted the tweet after receiving backlash and corrected things by…removing her from the equation entirely, and adding a derisive, “Better?” to try to antagonize the outrage mob.

Cool, guy. Neato.

Hightower isn’t the only notable Patriot to be opting out of the 2020 season, either, especially on defense. Following Patrick Chung’s announcement around noon, it appears the Pats will be missing a cavalcade of Pro Bowl-type essentials (though they’ll also be pocketing a ton of cap space in the process to help the team shuffle some replacements in).

This might not be the end of the road, either. Patriots DB Jason McCourty made his thoughts clear on his “Double Coverage” podcast on Monday, and said he doesn’t believe the behavior he’s seen from his fellow NFL players indicates the season will end as intended.

With so many key defenders already gone, will the skittish McCourty twins really opt to stay?

At the very least, this rash of opt-outs will give Giardi a chance to practice his etiquette.