Fun thread. Lots of bitter recriminations and allegations of cheating on the part of the Patriots.
What I want to know is - How exacty did the Patriots cheat?
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Fun thread. Lots of bitter recriminations and allegations of cheating on the part of the Patriots.
What I want to know is - How exacty did the Patriots cheat?
(1) Spying on opponents' practices; andQuote:
Originally Posted by Pape
(2) Deliberately breaking rules (that, unfortunately, the refs allowed to be broken) regarding holding receivers.
Where have you been for the last dozen years? This is not new information.
I may be remembering this wrong, but I remember the RAMS being flagged to Defensive Holding and Pass interference in that game, as well as holding and a few other things that the cheatriots were not. Wasn't there a penalty on the RAMS for facemask, when it was clear that the tackle was made by pulling the guy (Brady???) down by front of his pads (arm wrapped over the shoulder)? Kind of hard to use the same tactics as your opponent when you are the only one getting penalized for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by r8rh8rmike
gap
Matt Walsh, who was the Patriots covert video guy/spy, admitted to watching the Rams walk-through, and reported what he saw to Belicheat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pape
Quote:
Walsh, a former scout, told the coach he saw Marshall Faulk lined up to return a kick and he saw the Rams tight end roll to one side depending on the defensive coverage. Faulk did return a kickoff just before the end of the first half of the game. While there was no tape of the walk-through, Walsh provided some inside information that might have been beneficial to the Patriots.
My point was that Martz did not adjust to what the officials were allowing on the field. He continued to call pass plays thet were being disrupted, instead of shifting the focus of the offense to running Faulk, something that worked to perfection two weeks earlier against the Eagles.Quote:
Originally Posted by gap
I just read this entire thread. Thanks for rehashing my worst nightmare ever! It wasn't bad enough that we lost but that weasel TOMMY BRADY got the MVP! Talk about rolling out the red carpet for the new kid. Brady did squat in the game and he gets the trip to Disney, HOGWASH!
I'm going to stick pins in my eyes now...thanks!
You did read the thread title before opening, right?:DQuote:
Originally Posted by laram0
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pape
Belichick insists Pats did not try to hide taping of opponents signals
Updated: May 18, 2008, 6:13 PM ET
Associated Press
BOSTON -- New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick lashed out at the team's former video assistant Friday, saying in a televised interview that Matt Walsh was a low-level staffer who was fired for "poor job performance"
"There's not a lot of credibility," Belichick said in an interview broadcast on "CBS Evening News."
[+] EnlargeBill Belichick
AP Photo/David J. PhillipBill Belichick on the extent of Matt Walsh's role with New England: "He didn't have any knowledge of football. He was our third video assistant."
"You know, he's tried to make it seem like we're buddies, and belong to the same book club and all. That's really a long, long stretch."
Belichick acknowledged that he violated NFL rules prohibiting filming opponents signals but insisted there was no intent to hide what he was doing.
"I made a mistake," he said in the interview. "I was wrong. I was wrong."
That rationale has already been rejected by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who fined the coach $500,000 and docked the Patriots $250,000 and its first-round draft pick.
"I didn't accept Bill Belichick's explanation for what happened," Goodell said Tuesday, "and I still don't to this day."
In an interview with HBO for "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel," Walsh dismissed Belichick's attempts to minimize the impact of the taping. Walsh told HBO he was coached on how to evade NFL rules, and that team officials instructed him on ways to avoid detection.
"When I was doing it, I understood what we were doing to be wrong," Walsh said. "Coach Belichick's explanation for having misinterpreted the rules, to me, that really didn't sound like taking responsibility for what we had done, especially considering the great lengths that we had gone through to hide what we were doing."
Belichick denied telling Walsh to hide what he was doing.
"You look at the tape. You see him filming the game," the coach told CBS. "You tell me how discrete it is."
Belichick has said he didn't even know Walsh, who was fired for poor performance and for making a tape recording of a meeting with player personnel director Scott Pioli.
"For him to talk about game-planning and strategy and play-calling and how he advised coordinators, it's embarrassing; it's absurd," Belichick said. "He didn't have any knowledge of football. He was our third video assistant."
Belichick's comments came on the same day the Boston Herald printed a front-page apology by reporter John Tomase, who wrote on the day before New England's Super Bowl loss to the New York Giants this year that the Patriots had taped the St. Louis Rams' walkthrough before the 2002 NFL title game.
Under the headline: "How it went wrong," Tomase wrote that he heard rumors the team's cheating was more widespread than the league had already acknowledged. But when he learned the team's video crew had been setting up equipment at the walkthrough, he made a "devastating leap of logic," by assuming the camera was rolling.
"First and foremost, this is about a writer breaking one of the cardinal rules of journalism: I failed to keep challenging what I had been told," he said.
"I had repeatedly heard that this walkthrough had been taped, and from people I trusted. Eventually I accepted it as fact and stopped questioning the assertion."
Wasn't it Holt, who after the game said how great of a coach belichick was because it was almost like he knew what plays they were going to run.
Well I just read this entire thread for some reason and good points were made by both sides but now I'm feeling depressed.
I would watch the game again so I could have an informed opinion on what happened but I would rather go see a Nickelback concert while having acid poured on my crotch than watch that game ever again.
Well my friend, something else that you have forgotten.Quote:
Originally Posted by r8rh8rmike
The NFC championship game was one week prior. If you will recall the season was delayed one week due to the 911 attacks.
The interesting thing is that in our Superbowl 34 appearance we were also denied the 2 weeks between the NFC title game and the Superbowl ( I forget the exact reason on that one - seems like it was some scheduling conflict).
So for us long suffering Rams fans that wanted to revel in the 2 week ceremony leading up to the Superbowl we were twice denied in a two year span.
Damn the luck!!
:ram:
You're absolutely right, it was just one week. I should have remembered that because of all the furious scrambling I had to do at the last minute to try and find tickets, hotel, and air fare in order to make it to New Orleans to attend the game. Unfortunately, I was able to do all three.:disapointed:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ferter