Patriots Twitter Posts 'I Hate N***ers'; Apologizes for 'Regrettable Tweet'

The New England Patriots sent out a shocking tweet on November 13 that immediately garnered the ire of people everywhere.

The team celebrated becoming the first team to garner one million followers on Twitter and came up with the hashtag #1MillionPatriots. The Patriots offered to make custom avatar jerseys for fans who retweeted their tweet.

In a report by TDDaily.com, through their official Twitter account, @Patriots tweeted, "We're saying thanks to @patriots' 1million followers w/ custom digital Pats jerseys - RT for yours! #1MillionPatriots"

The Patriots also uploaded a photo featuring the back of a navy blue and grey New England Patriots jersey No. 1 with the caption @YOURNAME, which is meant to suggest that fans can customize the jersey by putting their own name on it. A statement can be read at the bottom of the image, "Thanks for helping us become the first NFL team with 1 million followers! #1MillionPatriots."

Things were doing good in the beginning, with people putting their names and labels on the customizable jersey and featuring these on photos uploaded on Twitter.com. However, things blew out of proportion when one image showed the name on the back "@IHATENIGGERSS".

In a report by Buzzfeed.com, the Patriots immediately removed the tweet after one hour and publicly apologized on the social media site, "We apologize for the regrettable tweet that went out from our account. Our filtering system failed & we will be more vigilant in the future."

Twitter users were outraged upon viewing the jersey. Some tweeted how it was the "Last minute entry for worst tweet of 2014". Others were poking fun that someone at the Patriots' office will be fired soon. There were Twitter users who joked that the Pats could not drop the violator since it would drop their followers back down to 999,999.

Although the tweet has since been removed, USA Today reported that there were still a number of ridiculous tweets and customizations from creative NFL fans, as featured on the jersey.

Although garnering one million Twitter followers cannot be said as a real feat, the Patriots have been doing very well as the season progresses and their recent win over the highly favored Denver Broncos can spell bigger things in January 2015, writes NFL.com. The team merchandise is expected to sell well in the following months as their popularity grows, but they have to be more stringent about their filtering system to avoid the same racist mistake.