Oh wait, because Football is a complicated and quick game with many moving and changing parts and signals is just one part. Defense are disguised, signals, change, personal change each game, each play. But if it really makes people feel better to simplify it and call a coach or team cheaters then go ahead. I will simply call it irrational jealously. ”

it’s exactly because football is a complex game that teams look for any edge they can get. there is no silver bullet because of the complexity. how many of those close wins might have been losses had they not had the competitive advantage (however big or small it was)?

i will simply call it irrational refusal to accept reality among patriot fans. i have no vested interest in or jealosy toward the patriots, cheating or not.

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Oh wait, because Football is a complicated and quick game with many moving and changing parts and signals is just one part. Defense are disguised, signals, change, personal change each game, each play. But if it really makes people feel better to simplify it and call a coach or team cheaters then go ahead. I will simply call it irrational jealously.

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Just as we pats fans have “Excuses”; non-Pats fans have theirs as well.

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a) it’s not my “theory” that they cheated. the nfl punished them for violating a rule that gave them a competitive advantage. that’s cheating. there is no way the nfl takes away a 1st round draft pick if what the patriots did was a technical violation

b) losing an advantage doesn’t not guarantee losses, just like having an advantage does not guarantee wins, especially when you lose the cheating advantage in a season when you add one of the top 2 or 3 wideouts of all-time.

c) as i previously speculated, it’s highly probable that the patriots have a database of defensive calls built up from their years of cheating. losing the original tapes would have little, if any, immediate impact. that database would become slowly obselete over time as the information in the database got old

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May 20th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
You still have yet to answer this question :

Since the Patriots got caught in the first game of the 2007 season, they went on an 18 game win streak. If the theory that they cheated is correct, they did not have the same advantage they had in previous years and therfore should have lost a few games. Instead they won most of them.”

***they had a great offense. in the past, tom brady didn’t have those great wr’s. the patriots are reaping the benefit of years of getting ahead and that is that free agents will sign for teams that have a winning chance. the patriots have had a winning chance, in part, to an unfair competitive advantage.

just because they blew teams out this year doesn’t prove they can play fair. it just proves that if you give tom brady two good wr’s and a good O-line, he can complete a lot of passes

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Since the Patriots got caught in the first game of the 2007 season, they went on an 18 game win streak. If the theory that they cheated is correct, they did not have the same advantage they had in previous years and therfore should have lost a few games. Instead they won most of them.

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those look like meaningless numbers to me. i’m basing my assessment on two things 1) my eyes, since i watched many patriots games last year to enjoy their explosive show only to see them stymied more and more effectively as the season wore on and 2) the fact that the patriots played the first half of the season as a record setting offense in footballoutsiders DVOA rating, but by the end of the season had fallen back quite a bit.

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well, it’s primarily based on this self-centered persecution complex that patriots fans have. there is no grand conspiracy to get the patriots. the nfl is not composed of patriot fans and patriot haters.

the patriots cheated and got caught. this isn’t an attack on the patriots. it’s a simple statement of fact.

patriots fans are whiny when they:

- claim that the patriots didn’t cheat or that the patriots got caught by a technicality
- claim that knowing what the defensive signals don’t provide any advantage
- claim that the haters are keeping this story alive when it is, in fact, the stonewalling by belichick and goodell’s destruction of the evidence that are keeping the story alive (as a comparison see the different approaches taken by roger clemens and andy pettitte for taking HGH)
- defend what the patriots did with ridiculous arguments like “in a game in 20xx the patriots blah blah blah and only won by x points (or lost by x points) see that proves they didn’t cheat.
- use strawman arguments like “see walsh didn’t have walkthrough tapes” to imply that the patriots were innocent all along
- complain about the coverage this is receiving in the media
- complain about how others are claiming this tarnishes the superbowl wins
- blame everyone else for the controversy when they should be blaming their own team

i empathize with your situation and understand that you are going through a tough time as patriot fans, but suggest than rather than defend your team, you should take your lumps like men and stop acting like children. there is nothing to defend here. the team cheated and they were punished, HOWEVER, until someone comes clean the press and others will keep digging. that is belichick’s fault, not the media.

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No it is not proof. If you watched the games, you have seen our Defense kept us in a lot of games late. Check your stats. Brady put up 400 on Pitt in Dec and 356 on the Giants two weeks later. How does this look like a regressing offense?

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What makes us Pats fans whiny? Is it because we are passionate about our team? Because we are defending our team? You would do the same thing if it was your team.

Yes, The Pats did wrong, got caught and got penalized. Yes as a Pats fan I want this to go away. But as we all know, it will not. It is unfortunate that I cannot view this from the outside.

I can see if The Pats stole their playbook, or did tape a practice, yeah that is flat out cheating. But really we got some defensive signals and that was it. Nothing different that a QB simulation the snap to try and draw the team offsides. I really feel there is a fineline between cheating and breaking the rules. Pats broke the rules and paid for it.

However, my initial assertion that we put up one of the most dominating seasons in history was completed after they were caught. This speaks highly to the theory that the information they got was minimal as they were not blowing out teams prior to last year.

How can you deny that?

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that’s a good way to think about it and i guess you can’t really fault them for that. you put your heart into rooting for a team only have them foolishly tarnish it by continuing a practice they had been repeatedly warned about. how can someone so smart in one area be so stupid in other areas? i think bob ryan has belichick pegged with the nixon comparison.

what probably makes it worse is that no one really knows how helpful that information really was. my sense is that it helped quite a bit, but unlike steroids, you can’t quite quantify it.

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Dude, Weis has coached Notre Dame for 3 seasons. Seasons 1 & 2 ended in BCS Bowl bids. Season 3…well, us Domers would like to forget last season. He’ll have 2 more to make up for it before the Fire Weis websites gain traction.

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i’m getting that impression. for some reason, i actually like plainview, lol.

but for that reason you mention, i have started calling them “legacy protectors” because that’s what this is about.

if you’re a pats fan, you are naturally biased in your opinion. you are therefore excluded from an objective discussion. and there main ploy is to call you a “hater” to put you in that same biased category. that is the irony of all ironies

if i took the time to really understand all the documented evidence, i could punch holes and out-debate even the stubbornest of all biased fans. i did the same thing with all the barry bonds/giants homers.

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mr plainview,

ok, have fun with your semantics. they were taping signals, compiling a huge ass vault-database of signals, studying them, and using that knowledge for future contest. ok, but they weren’t “stealing signals” in the same game. i got it. you and belicheat are working the same loophole.”

trikee, you’ll never move him off the position that what the patriots did wasn’t cheating. in his mind, the patriots were punished harshly and the nfl gave itself a black-eye for no good reason.

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well, i’m not a pats hater, but i am starting to dislike whiny patriot fans.

i’m sure the patriots/belichick kept some internal database of opponent defensive signs that they continued to use throughout the season. it’s not proof, but you should note that the recordbreaking patriots offense started out unbelieveably hot, but gradually regressed as the season went on.

one could argue this was in part due to the aging of the information in their database.

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also, part of why this story wont end fast enough for pats fans is belichek’s arrogance. goodell doesn’t like being lied to. and the last thing that makes a lot of people uncomforatable is destroying the tapes.

i’ll really be surprised if the celtics get passed detroit. i’m not just talking smack. the playoff brand of basketball has exposed some pretty major flaws in the celtics game. i’m a kings fan (hate the lakers). the reason i bring that up is that one of the same reasons the kings didn’t get passed the lakers will plague the celtics and that is peja stojakovic = ray allen. best shooters in the nba regular season, knowhere to be found in the playoffs. these guys wilt under the pressure. you might be right the celtics have a better chance against the lakers than the spurs but i still think it’s the lakers year. next year they get andrew bynum back which will make them regretably scary

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“After the 1969 season, Joe Robbie, owner of the Miami Dolphins, signed Shula to a contract to become Miami’s second head coach. As a result of Shula’s signing the team was charged with tampering by the NFL, which forced the Dolphins to give their first round pick to the Colts. The decision was controversial because Shula and Robbie’s negotiations and signing were conducted before and after the official NFL/AFL merger, respectively. Had the negotiations been concluded before the merger, while the NFL and AFL were rivals, the NFL’s anti-tampering rules could not have been applied.”

I am so tired of morons like you commenting on how the Dolphins lost a pick due to tampering. Know the facts. The “tampering” here was something which only became an issue because the negotiations were not complete prior the merger. Otherwise, it was two different leagues, and all bets were off.

Are you f’ing serious dude? First off Wiki is a site that any moron like you can edit and rewrite as they see fit. I’m guessing that WIKI is your bible and you take everything as gospel, that’s your first problem. If you’re really going to play a semantics game here what’s the point in having an intelligent conversation? They lost a first round pick because of cheating, there’s no other way to spin in than that, THEY LOST A FIRST ROUND DRAFT PICK!!!
No one here gives a frogs fat ass about what the language was or how technically it was this or that assuming your source is correct which I’m not doing.

THEY LOST A FIRST ROUND DRAFT PICK!!!THEY LOST A FIRST ROUND DRAFT PICK!!!THEY LOST A FIRST ROUND DRAFT PICK!!!THEY LOST A FIRST ROUND DRAFT PICK!!!THEY LOST A FIRST ROUND DRAFT PICK!!!

Thanks for the laugh though…

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The Jets cheated after the memo too so where’s the separation? and what are they really cheating about? what do they get from those tapes that no one else gets from film or from the league if they buy it like the Dolphins?

Belichick didn’t invent taping, Johnson said he did it too and the Colts O line coach now is the best in the game….so yeah, other teams do it…the Pats got the blame because Goodell used to be a Jet.

Celtics are winning it all unless the Spurs beat the Lakers.

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May 19th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Buddy, please be better prepared when coming to a site like this, your quote above shows how much you really know about this:
here’s a short list for you:
The 72 undefeated Dolphins were docked a 1st round pick for illegally grabbing their coach Don Shula (they were champs that year for people not understanding the theme)
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Dude, you need to be better prepared. The ‘72 Dolphins did not get ‘docked’ a 1st round pick for grabbing Don Shula. Here is the quote straight from Wekipedia:

“After the 1969 season, Joe Robbie, owner of the Miami Dolphins, signed Shula to a contract to become Miami’s second head coach. As a result of Shula’s signing the team was charged with tampering by the NFL, which forced the Dolphins to give their first round pick to the Colts. The decision was controversial because Shula and Robbie’s negotiations and signing were conducted before and after the official NFL/AFL merger, respectively. Had the negotiations been concluded before the merger, while the NFL and AFL were rivals, the NFL’s anti-tampering rules could not have been applied.”

I am so tired of morons like you commenting on how the Dolphins lost a pick due to tampering. Know the facts. The “tampering” here was something which only became an issue because the negotiations were not complete prior the merger. Otherwise, it was two different leagues, and all bets were off.

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ok, have fun with your semantics. they were taping signals, compiling a huge ass vault-database of signals, studying them, and using that knowledge for future contest. ok, but they weren’t “stealing signals” in the same game. i got it. you and belicheat are working the same loophole.

i know all teams cheat. but the patriots took it to another level and when, as florio said, “The Patriots cheated, for years.
The Pats continued to cheat even after they knew that the league was onto them.”, that’s what seperated them from all the other cheaters.

i agree that the pats are a great team, so you don’t have to
quote any records or compare them to the giants to me. they got greedy and cheated better than anyone had ever did. they didn’t take responsibility when the league started to notice, now they are forever tainted because of their arrogance.

make sure you find me on here when the celtics lose. you can tell me “in your face” if they don’t. i am very sure they don’t have what it takes to win a championship

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The cheating was for videotaping opposing teams’ signals for use in future games (they said they did not use the tapes for in-game benefits and there is no evidence that they did). But the Pats fans who keep saying “but this whole thing is nonsense because it would be legal to tape from the stands” are wrong. The rule is as follows:

“Use at any time, from the start to the finish of any game in which a club is a participant, of communication or information-gathering equipment, other than Polaroid-type cameras or field telephones, including without limitation videotape machines, telephone tapping or bugging devices, or any other form of electronic device that might aid a team during the playing of a game.”

“A game” means any game, including future games. Does not matter where the taping occurred, it was against the rules. (The fact that other rules talk about the sidelines, etc. does not mean that it was OK under this rule to tape from the stands.) Goodell confirmed this. Belichick argued that he thought this rule meant that you can’t tape if you want to use the tape for in-game help. Goodell said no, that interpretation is wrong, this rule means you can’t tape for the benefit of future games either. The issue was NOT where the Pats taped, it was that they taped.

Thought that might clear things up for some; or not.

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what part of “stealing signals is legal” aren’t you getting? they were punished for filming from a prohibited location, not stealing signals. what they had on film is no different than what anyone in the crowd could see. you haters act like they had some unseen power that gave them all the answers LOL.

The Dolphins bought tape and audio from the league, no different than what the Pats record, yet the Pats got in trouble? The league has to make money somehow.

The Jets taped the Pats the year before the Pats taped them, so yeah, it’s a fair question ask. why do the Pats get bashed but the Jets are swept under the rug.

The Celtics lost on the road, not at home, and guess what, they have home court throughout.

You want to talk about cheating, talk about the NBA.

The Giants won the SB for 2 reasons:

1.) No holding call on Eli’s miracle throw.

2.) Samuel dropped a sure int.

The Giants are ranked out of the top 5 power rankings for a reason, yeah they’re SB champs but no one respects them as the best.

The Pats are the best, 18-1 > 13-6 + #1 in power ranking despite spygate.

Pats had no tapes to study, the collection was destroyed….it would be nice to think they had everything memorized.

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Even if the tapes contributed a small incremental advantage, that advantage would compound over time and in combination with other information. Gathering years of incrementally better information is the point.

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May 19th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
and the Celtics are 25-5 against the West, they aren’t worried about them.

yeah, i’m pretty sure they better be worried about them because this is the PLAYOFFS

in the PLAYOFFS…playoffs? they celtics lost 3 out of 4 to the atlanta-freakin-hawks and lebron james. i just say lebron james because that’s all there is. ray allen is nowhere to bee seen. kevin garnett defers in the 4th quarter. pierce can’t always do it all. he’s their only gamer

detroit will be boston and the lakers will dominate either of them. kobe is clutch and doesn’t choke. can’t say the same about garnett and ray allen

since 98-99, the west has won 7 out of 9 times. you can count 08 as a west year

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“Hey, Skabaltimore, I never said the Pats were victims. They were guilty of breaking the rules during the first game of the season, and they were punished for that transgression.”

Again — you live in total denial. The Pats have been cheating since 2000, not just the first game of the season. THAT’S the bottom line. And everybody in the world — including the Commissioner — understands that. The Commissioner understands that the “oh, it was only a couple of games”, and “oh, it didn’t really affect the outcome” is a bunch of crap and he’s not buying it. Everybody understands that it was done for a very specific purpose — the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage — or else it wouldn’t have been done in the first place. Everybody, that is — except for the sorry azz Pats fans. And all that does is make other team’s fans pump up the volume of the rallying cry even louder: “CHEATERS”!

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i love how you take the same argument all the other patriot homers take, that it’s allowable from certain “angles” laughable!

then you play the “everyone else cheats” card! too funny

Mike Florio said it best a couple days ago:

“The Patriots cheated, for years.

The Pats continued to cheat even after they knew that the league was onto them.

The NFL imposed a stiff punishment for the cheating.

The NFL destroyed the evidence that the Patriots turned over regarding cheating, making it impossible for anyone to know the extent of the Pats’ cheating.”

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Belichick is an asswipe (I think most of us can agree on that). He probably cheated and had some kind of advantage. The extent to which it helped win championships we’ll never know. Life goes on. Can we?

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What I am saying, and what you fail to comprehend, is that all the other crap in the media was misinformation. The taping of the walkthrough, the bugging of coach-to-quarterback microphones, all the other allegations . . . they were all false.

Where did that stuff come from, and who was promoting it? And why? It’s not hard to figure out; nearly all of it, with the exception of the Tomase story, came from the New York media. Facts without context don’t lead to knowledge and insight.

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Jeebus do you even read or listen to whats been said? The Pats did not go to great lengths to hide what they were doing. For the most part they were in plain site on the sidelines where 65,000 people can see what they were doing.

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………………………………………………………………………………..

1.) it’s not against the rules to tape signals…it’s against the rules to film from certain locations and matters not what is filmed. you can buy from the league however, just as the Dolphins did against the Pats in 2006….but that’s not cheating????

2.) would it make sense to let the other team know where you are when trying to steal signals?

3.) they taped because it forced the other teams to change their calls and the Pats knew the team would eventually mess up trying to fool the Pats.

4.) same reason why the Jets filmed them in the playoffs but the Jets have the New York media and former Jets employee, Goodell as commish to protect them.

5.) #2

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for the people saying Weis isn’t a genius because Notre Dame sucked….well does that mean Walsh isn’t a genius because Stanford sucked after he left the 9ers?

…………………………..

the players comments are interesting because it seems to me that they’re admitting, without admitting, that their team does it too.

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And as for Brady vs. Young………….at least Young wasn’t a one-dimensional QB as Brady is. When Young was playing he was able to move out of the pocket, shed sacks, and extend the play with his feet to make plays. Brady is capable of none of that. Brady’s success is soley dependant upon having time in the pocket to throw. When he does make the odd scramble now and then he’s slow as molasses and dives for the turf when a defender gets within 10 yards of him. When teams are able to get good pressure on him you may as well put the name Grossman on his back. We saw this in the Super Bowl.

It’s funny that Pats fans still are under the impression that the Pats will just walk over any every team at will just because they’re mad at the world because they got caught cheating. LOL. You guys weren’t really blowing anybody out after that Philly game. Teams were playing you close most of the 2nd half of the season. Hell, the Chargers without LT and a QB that was playing without an ACL in his knee very nearly beat you. And I don’t have to remind of what happened in the Super Bowl when Brady and that line were literally man-handled the whole game. For a time last season the Pats were 80’s era Mike Tyson. At the Super Bowl Mike Tyson met Buster Douglass (the Giants) and the rest is history. The mystique is gone. Nobody’s afraid of you guys anymore.

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This is the best. “Pats as victims”.

THAT’S why the Pats have become the most hated team in the NFL. It’s because of their stupid “genius” coach. And their stupid homer fans.

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1. The concussions Steve Young suffered while playing football have severely affected his intelligence.
2. There was good reason for Belichick treating the media like the scum that they are for all these years. These past nine months have proven him right.
3. Despite the numerous former and current players and coaches going on record that taping signals has no real advantage except saving man hours for team scouting staffs, the idiots and haters focus on the three people in the country who claim its a game changing advantage; Steve Young the brain damaged Mormon, the proven liar and thief Matt Walsh, and Mark Shlereth whose stupidity rivals that of most people posting comments on this website.
4. Despite saying they wish this story would go away, Mike Florio and all the other mediots continue to use Spygate as a crutch to hide their inability to write compelling stories on anything else.
5. Fans claiming that taping signals made the Pats what they are today are either trolling or completely ignorant about the game of football. I’m guessing these fans are also using message boards as an outlet for the feelings of hopelessness they have knowing that barring miraculous events like the Giants experienced on the last drive of the SuperBowl, their team has no chance of beating the Patriots next season. ”

Great post

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As of right now the pats fans and pats team are laughing at all the rest of us cause they brought home the trophys and the nfl heirchy is letting them keep it. If you knowingly cheat to win those trophys no way should you be allowed to keep them. What is sportsmanship anymore. It seems like a dead idea.

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It was never as big a deal as it was made out to be, not for the NFL, anyway. Two teams can’t stand each other, but neither has the right to be sanctimonious about what has transpired during the last eight months or so.

Walsh was not Tomase’s source. Connect the dots, folks. It’s not that hard to unravel.

Why is it that Brady says the one team he doesn’t respect is the Jets? It’s not because he doesn’t respect the players who wear green. It’s because the Pats know who kept feeding dishonest and misleading information to the rumor mill right up to the day of the Super Bowl.

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It’s just funny to me that anybody in the media whether it be Matt Walsh or former players of journalists get lashed out at by Pats fans because they’re talking about it and not minimizing it the certain other people are. And then these Pats fans cling to those other people to try and justify what their team did. Pats fans don’t like the message so they’re trying their hardest to shoot the messenger whenever possible.

The only entity to blame in all this are the New England Patriots. They did it to themselves, nobody did it to them. And if it wasn’t advantagous to do what they did, then they wouldn’t have done it. It’s really that simple. If it was of no use, Belichick wouldn’t have bothered. Simple common sense, and that’s all it really comes down to. As i’ve said, there’s a perfectly good reason why guys like Wiess have kept their mouths shut. There’s a good reason why no Pats offensive players or coaches (past or present) have gotten on the podium to defend their team and their legacy after all this criticism and all this scrutiny.

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