An American football team just had a major fail on Twitter

This is unfortunate.

Yesterday, the New England Patriots were celebrating the exciting(?) fact that they were the first NFL team to reach 1 million followers on Twitter.

So they decided to reward their followers by creating custom avatar jerseys for anyone who retweeted the following tweet.

We're saying thanks to @patriots' 1million followers w/ custom digital Pats jerseys - RT for yours! #1MillionPatriots pic.twitter.com/u2SfidCb9e

— New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 13, 2014

It has been retweeted more than 8,500 times so it's not hard to imagine that something would slip through the cracks.

And one very unfortunate (and offensive) Twitter handle did.

The tweet was quickly deleted but not before Deadspin managed to get a screenshot of the offending post.

Oops.

The Patriots then tweeted this apology.

We apologize for the regrettable tweet that went out from our account. Our filtering system failed & we will be more vigilant in the future.

— New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 14, 2014

Somebody definitely got in loads of trouble.

[H/T: thescore.ie]