Last week, we wrote that someone needs to nail down the question of whether former Pats video employee Matt Walsh taped the defensive coaching signals of the St. Louis Rams during the 2001 regular-season game played between the two teams.

If Walsh did, then there would be a real possibility that the tape was used in an effort to crack the Rams’ code for the teams’ Super Bowl XXXVI rematch.

Buried in a Q&A session between Walsh and the New York Times is the apparent answer to the question.  Asked what his duties were during that regular-season game, Walsh said:  “Filmed, to the best of my recollection.  I can’t specifically say I remember the details of what I filmed.”

So the answer to the key question is “maybe”.

We’re concerned, frankly, by the equivocal nature of Walsh’s response.  Faced with an opportunity to remove a fairly large cloud of concern from the Pats’ unexpected achievements in 2001, Walsh pulled out the “I don’t remember” card, even though his memory on other topics is as clear and thorough as Rain Man’s knowledge of the phone book from A through half of G.

How could Walsh not remember whether the team’s then-fledging taping experiment would return the ultimate payoff by giving the Pats video evidence of the Rams’ defensive coaching signals as the two teams prepared to meet in the Super Bowl?

Surely, Walsh didn’t tape the Rams’ defensive coaching signals during that regular season game.  Otherwise, he would have said that he did.  His failure to say that he didn’t in unmistakable terms is, in our view, disgraceful.

Our guess is that Walsh knew that he’d be running afoul of the terms of his indemnity agreement with the NFL if he said he taped the 2001 regular-season game with the Rams, and so he opted to allow the doubt to continue to hover on this specific question.  And Greg Bishop of the New York Times, whose puff pieces on folks like Walsh lawyer Michael Levy, former Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe, and former NFL exec Charley Casserly possibly were rewarded with scoops such as the submission of tapes from Matt Walsh to the NFL, an off-the-record statement from a former Pats player (Bledsoe?) regarding the cheating scandal, an unnamed quotes from a longtime NFL exec with knowledge of competition committee meetings (Casserly?) regarding the supposed focus of cheating complaints on the Pats, failed in his duty to play both sides of the story evenly by not pressing Walsh as to the ludicrous nature of his supposed failure of recollection.

So even though Walsh stopped short of claiming that the Pats engaged in more widespread cheating than previously reported, we believe that part of his plan was to cause as much trouble for the team as he possibly could, while at the same time protecting himself against any claim that he was intentionally lying.