The item to which the Drudge Report has or will be linking is a New York Times article that traces the Patriots’ practice of videotaping defensive coaching signals back to the 2000 preseason.

But this really isn’t “new.”  It has been established that Pats coach Bill Belichick began the practice when he joined the team in 2000.  Belichick contends that he interpreted the rules to permit the practice.

So that’s it.  Those are the “new cheating charges.” 

We don’t fault the guys who wrote the article, John Branch and Greg Bishop.  Instead, the false impression created by the headline was created by whoever wrote the headline.  As we’ve learned over the years, that person rarely is the person who wrote the story.

The Times article also contains some interesting quotes harvested on Thursday in Indianapolis.  For example, former Rams coach Mike Martz said that he wants the league to continue to investigate whether the Patriots taped his team’s walk-through practice prior to Super Bowl XXXVI, and Martz took issue with the notion that having such information wouldn’t be useful.

“For somebody to say that, it’s kind of disgusting,” Martz said.  “The whole point is if they really cheated.  To say he took some steroids and it did help or it didn’t help, that’s never the point.  The point is, to all these high school coaches and high school kids and college kids, that if they did cheat, that’s the point.”