FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The Bermuda Triangle not-so-mysteriously entangled another Patriots opponent here Sunday.
A 25-year-old Boston man was arrested after rousting the Steelers early Sunday morning by setting off the fire alarm in their Boston hotel in the runup to the AFC Championship.
Massachusetts State Police arrested Dennis Harrison of East Boston and charged him with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and setting off a fire alarm after they found him wandering the property without being a registered guest shortly after the alarm went off at 3:40 a.m.
Someone also set off the fire alarm at Gillette Stadium later Sunday morning, prompting a brief evacuation of all personnel in the stadium under the threat of a $500 fine if they failed to do so.
The hotel fire alarm was yet another example of what led former Jets linebacker Bart Scott to label a trip to New England as a visit to “The Bermuda Triangle” because of all the annoying incidents that seem to occur to opponents before — and during — a matchup with the Patriots at Gillette Stadium.
“It’s always something there, man,” Scott said in a 2015 radio interview. “Everything goes a little crazy out there.”
The Steelers were staying at a Hilton hotel near Logan Airport when Harrison allegedly set off the alarm, resulting in an evacuation by the state police and the airport fire department.
It was nothing new for the Steelers, who are used to apparent subterfuge when facing Bill Belichick’s team. The Steelers, you will recall, famously had their headsets go out in the first half of a season-opening loss at Gillette Stadium in 2015.
Another former Jet, guard Alan Faneca, spent 10 seasons with Pittsburgh before joining Gang Green and wrote on Twitter after Sunday’s incident the Patriots’ streak of false visitor fire alarms was alive and well.
“Never played a game in NE where that did not happen,” Faneca wrote. “Every single time.”
Faneca told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week the Steelers and Jets always could count on being rustled out of their beds in the dead of night when traveling to New England.
“From the top to the bottom of the [Jets and Steelers] organization, you felt there was something different [when you faced the Patriots],” Faneca said. “Those rumors have always swirled around New England.”
That’s why Faneca and others were so tickled when the Patriots had the fire alarms at their hotel go off twice in three nights before the 2015 Super Bowl in Arizona.
Of course, that didn’t prevent Belichick & Co. from winning their fourth Lombardi Trophy with a 28-24 win over the Seahawks, but Patriots haters enjoyed their brief discomfort.
“I laughed when that happened,” Faneca told the Pittsburgh paper. “I thought it was pretty ironic when it happened to them.”