The Patriots cheat:
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has determined that the New England Patriots violated league rules Sunday when they videotaped defensive signals by the New York Jets’ coaches, according to league sources.
NFL security officials confiscated a camera and videotape from Patriots video assistant Matt Estrella on the New England sidelines when it was suspected he was recording the Jets’ defensive signals. Sources say the visual evidence confirmed the suspicion.
Goodell is considering severe sanctions, including the possibility of docking the Patriots “multiple draft picks” because it is the competitive violation in the wake of a stern warning to all teams since he became commissioner, the sources said. The Patriots have been suspected in previous incidents.
They should have to forfeit the win, too.
Bob In Pacifica
Who gets the draft picks? The Jets?
Duane
Hopefully this will put to rest all the nonsense about Bellicheat being such a great coach.
PaulW
I’m with Bob, the Jets should get the draft picks.
And I agree with John, the Pats should forfeit the win too. If they cheated to win, it wasn’t a win.
I blame Bush. You didn’t see the Patriots get caught cheating during the Clinton years…
demimondian
Nonsense. It’s OK if you’re a patriot.
demimondian
True enough — the only cheating that anyone was caught doing during the Clinton years was done by Clinton himself.
Ralph Dosser
This sounds like the kind of act that, proper or no, simply can’t be prevented in the long run. So next time they won’t record from the sidelines – they’ll record from the stands. Or with a device too small to be seen. Fans will start to record. You’ll have 200 people liveblogging every game with their phones, announcing what the next play is going to be.
Welcome to MMC. If it can be seen, if it can be heard – anywhere – it will be recorded. Smart teams will protect their signals somehow, certainly not advertise with civil-war era semaphores.
DP
If you give the draft picks to the Jets they’ll just waste them anyway.
John Cole
True story. Prolly better off just taking away two picks from the Patriots and getting rid of them.
Ralph Dosser
Except for Gingrich, Livingston, DeLay, Hyde, Burton, Barr … and possibly some guys outside the GOP.
Teak111
As a charger fan, glad they caught them now.
ThymeZone
The only thing surprising to me is that all teams dont do this, do it all the time, and haven’t been doing it for 50 or 75 years. In fact, I have to assume that they have been, until I see convincing evidence to the contrary. Maybe not with the video camera, but with scouts and binoculars.
Come on, stealing signals is as old as team sports.
If I were running an NFL team I’d have decoy signals just to throw off the signal stealers. I think the big story here is that this idiot was dumb enough to get caught.
Wow, what’s next today? I’m reminded of a large banner headline I once saw on page one of a small town newspaper:
CAR STOLEN.
RSA
It would not surprise me in the slightest if this drew more attention than examples of illegal government eavesdropping. There aren’t any foreigners playing for the Jets, are there?
Equal Opportunity Cynic
I’m a very disheartened Patriots fan. I can’t stand how the fans of the SEC football factories who beat my alma mater senseless every weekend make excuses when they’re caught cheating, and I’ll be damned if I’ll do the same. There should be serious consequences.
Leader Desslok
I knew something was up when the Patsies started winning Super Bowls.
Mr Furious
Full disclosure: I am a Pats fan, and when I lived back east was a season ticket holder
Here’s my take—if you are calling your plays in from the sidelines with hand signals that your players on the field and everyone in the stadium can see, I do NOT consider deciphering those signals cheating. Period.
If The Hoodie is smart enough to crack that code in real time and burn you with his offense—advantage Patriots, and quit yer bitching.
BUT, if they are using video to record and analyze those signals over the course of a game, or halftime or whatever, it’s a clear violation of the “no recording allowed” rule, and the Pats deserve a harsh penalty.
But, I don’t want to hear any shit about them doing this in the past. If the Packers caught them last year and didn’t do anything about it, they can promptly STFU about it now. That means one of two things to me—they can’t prove shit, and thus didn’t actually “catch” anything, OR they did, but didn’t take it to the League because they, and everybody else, is doing it too.
It does, however, diminish Belichick’s accomplishments to me.
Nicholas Weaver
How is this cheating?
Come on now, if your code is so easy to crack, you shouldn’t cry when others crack it.
All the coaches now use clipboards to prevent lip-reading the to-the-skybox communication, how is this any different?
The Other Steve
This is just one more example of the terrible decline in the morality of Western Society.
I really blame Clinton for this.
Pooh
Because the Pats deciphering defensive signals is what allowed Moss to beat triple coverage. what a bunch of bitches.
As they used to say in the SEC, if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.
Leader Desslok
They used to say that?
Those inbred hillbillies never met an NCAA violation they didn’t like.
jake
No one could have possibly foreseen that opposing groups would spy on one another.
This is a case of corporate espionage, but the story will get a lot more traction because a lot of people loathe the Pats and it happened soon after the basketball referee scandal.
Prepare ye for 90 days of navel gazing in the sports world.
caleb
TOP 4 clues to Patriot Past cheating.
1) 2001 championship game. Hines ward and Burress complain after the gmae that the Patriots were calling out their plays during the game.
2) 2004 championship game on a 4th and 1. The Steelers begin to huddle and Belichick ushers over LB Teddy Bruschi
and whispers something in his ear. Bruschi whispers something to the other players after he runs back onto the field.
Bruschi then stuffs bettis on the 4th and one. After the game Bruschi was asked what did Belichick whisper to him and he replies , “the guy just knows everything, he saw something and I can’t talk about it.”
3) after 2004 win in championship game, Brady was asked how he figured out the steelers defense. Brady said ” when you know the answers to the test, its easy.”
4) Belichick has never lost to a QB twice in the same season. Remember that stat? Sure , after he loses the first time, he studies their signals after video taping the coach and knows what defenses to call the 2nd time around.
_________________________________
Photographic evidence.
caleb
And then there is this.
Rumor is they actually hacked the Jets’ signal and listened in real time.
Video taping is one thing which is serious enough. But if this radio frequency allegation is true……wow.
Gerry
I live up hear in New England and am definitely NOT a Pats fan. That said, I have to say I’ve been impressed with the reactions from Pats fans. Easily 90% of what I’ve heard, media and otherwise, has been very critical of the Pats and Belichick with none of the usual and expected forms of excuse making.
Of course for my part, now I’ve got all I need to torture them for the remainder of the season. Life’s little pleasures…
Pug
I guess this goes to show you can even win with a lead-footed quarterback and slow linebackers if they know what side the blitz is coming from or if it’s going to be a pass or a run.
caleb
http://sports.aol.com/story/ar/_a/how-dirty-is-patriots-dynasty/20070912032409990001
scarshapedstar
Sport imitates life.
Incertus (Brian)
Dan LeBatard was asking his listeners yesterday afternoon about this–asked those people who’d been outraged by things like steroid or HGH use if they were pissed about this, and if not, why not. Cheating’s cheating, right? Fortunately, traffic wasn’t bad enough for me to hear someone try to get through the rhetorical hoops on that one.
On a side note, Belichick might want to stand a couple extra yards back from the sideline for the rest of the season, lest he accidentally get run over a few dozen times.
David
The Pats should forfeit just on general principle. Feeling you have to cheat to beat the Jets, really…
Salmon of Trout
I heard that the NSA has tapes of Belichick calling Al Qaeda asking for a hit on Peyton Manning, but the President is coveing it up because Bob Kraft has blackmail material from Bush’s days back at Yale and Harvard. And it’s dirtier than just the couple of kilos of cocaine he snorted.
That’s what I heard anyway.
Xenos
That is just damn clever. And unlike the videotaping of signals, is not explicitly forbidden. I guess it would have been too much to have the defensive linemen rub a couple neurons together to try to remember and decode the signals for themselves.
Then again, my college rugby team as been using the same verbal signals for 30 years, and no team has yet broken it. Heavy alcoholism and head injuries have their uses.
ThymeZone
A story circulated about a year or so ago that the NFL was mandating wired, and not wireless, communications between pressbox coaches and sideline coaches, out of concerns for interception of wireless signals by opposing teams. Thus in the age of the iPhone you still see coaches with headsets trailing wires behind them.
I’d say that it’s likely that sign stealing is widespread in the NFL, and as I said, I’d be very surprised if teams were not showing decoy signals to throw off the other side, or to test the opponent’s ability to steal a signal.
All part of the game AFAIC. And of course the stories will focus on the Pats. If the Cardinals were stealing signals, who would care?
Ollie Stone
caleb, i like the way you think. let’s do lunch. if you can explain that 108 yd runback then i’ll even pickup the tab!
comrad mattski
Damn’t and we lost to them in the superbowl by three points. If you cheat in the 1st game of the season wouldn’t you also cheat in the biggest game of the season?
AnonE.Mouse
I’m not a Patriot’s fan,nor the biggest fan of pro or college football these days,so it’s easy to see this ain’t that big a deal.Forfeiting the game should be sufficient.We hold the NFL to stricter fucking scrutiny than the NSA.
Z
Hey Caleb, you wouldn’t be a bitter Steeler Fan would you? I suppose the Pats cheated on the Troy Brown punt return in the 2001 AFC Championship game too. LOL. Let me guess, they knew the Steelers punt formation and that no one in the middle of your punt team could tackle?
Look the Patriots, stetched and broke the rule and got caught. they will pay the penealty that the Commissioner deams fair and move on and continue kicking the shoit out of the league. Can’t wait to hear what you guys come up with after they win another Superbowl this year.
“They have alien player and coaches on their team. It’s not fair. Waaaaah. My team sucks. So I have to hate on the Pats to make me feel good about myself”
Sparks
caleb Says:
If this was a offensive issue this may have some legs but wake up the offensive plays are called in by headset no by hand signals no your football before you try to say something like this. Also brought up is the fact that there are 10 other teams that work this practice from there press box does this count.
Z
Here’s something I know about football. The Steelers are 0-3 in AFC championship games. please list your excuses below…
Z
against the Pats that is…
caleb
Z….you really got me there. You are absolutely correct.
There is no excuse for the Steelers losing the AFC Championship game against Denver and then going on to win the Super Bowl.
You really do know something about football.