The New York Times received on Thursday yet another reward for a stream of fluff and puff regarding former Pats video employee Matt Walsh and his lawyer, Michael Levy. 

The Times got the first print Q&A with Walsh.

Here are a few highlights.  (The last one is the most important, in our view.)

Walsh justified his participation in the cheating scam because he apparently feared termination.  Or the loss of his job.  “I wasn’t going to question what they wanted me to do,” he said.  “They became upset if we filmed a practice drill incorrectly.  I didn’t want to imagine what the consequences would be if I refused to do something altogether.”

Also, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Pats didn’t use the tapes of the defensive coaching signals in the same game.   “There was no rush after I finished to get it to him right away.  Because typically we wouldn’t be playing the team for months to weeks later on.

“At first, it was filming teams we were going to be playing again later that year.  In 2001, it evolved to filming other teams, especially in the [AFC], that we thought we might either possibly see in the playoffs or see again another time.  It was the kind of situation that being the third video guy, there wasn’t anything else I necessarily needed to shoot, especially for home games.  So it was said, ‘Go ahead and shoot the signals.’”

Walsh says that, on at least one occasion, he noticed that an opposing team might be doing the same thing that the Pats were doing.  “[T]here was one time that I was filming and another team had set up their third video guy right next to me in our stadium,” Walsh said.  “And when our team was on defense, I looked over at him, and he was angling his camera toward our sideline. I didn’t ask him about it, because I was doing the same thing he was.  But after the game, I went and told [former defensive coordinator] Romeo Crennel, and there were a couple other defensive coaches standing around in his office at the time.  I’m not sure who overheard it or not.  But I told Romeo, ‘The next time we play this team, you may want to change your signals, because I think they’re doing to us what we do to them.’”