New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is so far inside the rest of the league’s heads that it’s a wonder his team ever loses.
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
The integrity of sports is one of the few things about which I’m deeply cynical. From middle school on, athletes learn that cheating pays and most athletes have few scruples about it. Do whatever works seems to be the rule.
That said, I think some organizations are cleaner than others and the Pats are among the worst.
Pro sports teams have absolutely nothing on Wall Street.
Belechik and Brady. Two cheaters and two horse’s asses.
Right, and you don’t even know about the high resolution spy satellite.
I knew NFL fans were dumb. Owners, sure. But aren’t the coaches supposed to be just a little bit smarter than the rest?
Consdering that over here in Pittsburgh, you hardly hear about Lieutenant John Kierney anymore — and nor will you ever — the NFL does know how to keep the fans’ eyes where it wants them.
I loved this part:
So the team thought they had their calls in 2002, thought they had them in a regular season of 2005, didn’t change their signals all year, then thought they had them in the playoff game. Also, the article makes it seem like it was notorious in the league from 2001 to 2006 that the Patriots were stealing signals. How hard is it to change signals? Or just have a system of dummy signals?
Of course, the fact that the other team knows your plays can also be attributed to, you know, superior scouting and coaching. It’s hardly unprecedented for one team to recognize formations, tendencies, etc. The article might have been more useful if it had provided some context about that, because I think the percentage of plays where one or both teams knows what the other team is going to do is likely much higher than is normally assumed. The mere fact of knowing what the other team is going to do is hardly the beginning and end of the game.
Sorry, that was from the ESPN piece, not SI.
Really funny stuff there. If I was a member of a team, I would keep track of what I heard and what I then observed. If the signals did not change, after a time you would have a lot of information.
That seems legal to me. You can’t “steal” what is a part of the game. If you don’t change stuff, you are gonna get caught eventually.
I’m not real sympathetic to the Steelers.
That’s stupid. All NFL games are taped.
Haha, bunch of whiners