Bill Belichick’s Legacy Tarnished Forever?
It’s been a little over a week since Judge Richard M. Berman ruled in favor of New England Patriots’ starting quarterback Tom Brady’s appeal of his four-game suspension for Deflategate. And, as if this cycle will never end, the Patriots are back in the news.
And again, it’s not for good reasons.
ESPN Senior Writers Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham posted a story on ESPN’s website that went more in-depth into the Spygate scandal that took place in 2007. The story, entitled “Spygate to Deflategate: Inside what split the NFL and Patriots apart,” found that the Patriots’ cheating has been more extensive than the NFL has ever revealed.
This report might be the final wrinkle in the argument that many sports fans and NFL analysts have been having ever since Spygate, and especially, as of more recently, Deflategate.
Is Bill Belichick and the Patriots legacy tarnished forever?
The report, which was based on interviews with more than 90 officials, owners, executives and coaches in the NFL, found that from 2000, Belichick’s first season as head coach, to 2007, the Patriots videotaped the signals of opposing coaches in 40 games.
They were finally caught on September 9, 2007 during a game against the New York Jets in which they were videotaping the Jets coaches.
On top of finding proof of stealing play calls in 40 games, the report also found that the Patriots would sometimes jam the opponents coach-to-quarterback radio line and low-level employees would steal play sheets from opponents’ locker rooms before the games. This actually became fairly well known among opposing teams’ coaches. So much so that they would sometimes even put out fake play sheets to throw the Patriots off if they happened to steal them.
The thought of the Patriots videotaping other team’s practices or stealing play sheets was widely speculated throughout the league. In an article posted on Sports Illustrated by Greg Bishop, Michael Rosenberg and Thayer Evans, they were told by employees of at least 19 NFL franchises that their teams took precautions against the Patriots that they didn’t take against any other opponent. According to Sports Illustrated, some teams have even gone as far as running fake plays on Saturday walkthroughs at Gillette Stadium, the home of the Patriots, just in case they were being watched or even barricading the visitors’ locker room so no one can get in.
Back in 2008, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called an emergency session of each team’s owner and head coach, according to the ESPN story. This is when Belichick finally had a chance to clear his name and try to explain some of these obvious breaches of the rules or at least apologize. His attempt at that didn’t work out so well.
The ESPN story reads that Bill Belichick, or “the cheating program’s mastermind,” said that he had misinterpreted the league rules. He thought that videotaping opposing teams’ signals was legal as long as it wasn’t used in real time. An excuse that barely anyone in the room at the time bought.
With all of this new information on Spygate, it may finally prove the point that NFL teams have been trying to say for years. You just can’t believe 100 percent of what Belichick or the Patriots say or do.
One of the best teams this side of 2000. One of the best quarterbacks all time. One of the best coaches of all time. All of which are forever tainted. All because they apparently thought, even with one of the better teams in the league, that they had to cheat to win. Which is what the Patriots, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick will always be remembered for. Not for what they did on the field, but what they did before the games, at practices and in the opposing teams’ locker rooms.
