NFL tightens post-Super Bowl locker-room security

The league instituted expanded security measures for locker room access after Sunday’s Super Bowl, not so much to protect the players, but their equipment. Well, one player’s equipment at the very least. A year after Tom Brady’s Super Bowl LI jersey was swiped from the postgame festivities (it eventually was recovered), credentials to enter the locker room at U.S. Bank Stadium included an RFID chip that had to be scanned.

Having reporters and others “tap in” and “tap out” with the technology allowed NFL security to keep better tabs on who enters and leaves the space.

NFL chief security officer Cathy Lanier told ESPN that the league gave its security procedures an “extensive review” after last year’s embarrassment.

“The way we like to look at this is, we are doing every possible thing with cameras and technology to keep things secure all the way up to that locker room door,” Lanier said. “Then we rely on our partners from our clubs, and that would be the Patriots and the Eagles that are here, to make sure with everything that goes on inside that locker room, they keep safe. It has been an extensive review and extensive changes that we made, but as you know, even with credentialed people in a really tight security operation, there can be incidents. We’re hoping that that does not happen this year.”

Brady will be taking his own precautions with his jersey.

“I’m taking it with me, man, if we win,” Brady said this week. “If we lose, I’m throwing it in the garbage.”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.