More On The Big Fat Cheating Meanies

And here's where I finally rant enough to earn myself an actual Crazy Jeff tag.

Apparently the "sync at halftime" system is precisely what they were doing with the tapes, according to some unlinked but published report. That changes things somewhat... that qualifies as proof of real-time shenanigans. Doesn't make it meaningful, but it's definitely far different than the after-the-fact stuff I hypothesized yesterday.

I'm fine with whatever punishment. The punishment levied isn't my beef with the situation, so whatever they want to do (picks, forfeits, big-ass suspensions, all three) is fine by me. Ideally, I'd prefer that it be appropriate to the actual crime, as opposed to a political maneuver to suck America's ignorant, reactionary cock. But hey, that's the bed they made when they cheated, so come what may.

However, my cooperation depends on America owning up to the following facts:

1. This gained the Pats a slight advantage at best, and did not affect any game outcomes
   
2. Belichick did it because he's psycho, not because it would actually make a difference
3. The only reason people are so pissed is because it's the Patriots

Seriously, America, admit it. Stop pretending it isn't personal. You look ridiculous. They're the team you hated for no reason. Now you have a reason, and you're exploiting it. Don't even think you'd feel the same way if it were the Chargers or the Bears.

In fact, you want proof of how full of shit you sanctimonious motherfuckers are? Two words: Shawne Merriman. QED, fuckos. He cheats, and his punishment is a Pro Bowl trip and a Nike commercial. EVERYONE turns the other way. But as soon as the Patriots cheat, somehow it's the goddamn 9/11 of sports. coughbullshitcough

Sorry, America, but Simmons and Aaron Schatz have it right. They nail the position of both Patriots fans (bummed, shamed) and the actual importance of the issue (not). They are voices of reason in a world gone mad, and I don't care how it looks for me to say so.

You want proof of that? Even King Kaufman thinks the whole thing is stupid. In fact, he objects to it a lot more vehemently than Simmons does! That there's the end of the argument, folks. It's as good as having God come out of the sky, in human form, to kick Skip Bayless in the beanbag.

Yeah, so I cited two Pats homers as part of my defense. Guess what: fuck you. I've been reading nothing but "fuck the Pats" stories all week, and I'm sick of it. Simmons is right, and you're wrong. I'm with Belichick: eat a dick. Suck it, swallow it, choke on it.

Here's why those two guys can be both Pats fans and reasonable. You may not agree with the end result, but Boston fans at least attempt to be well-informed. There are plenty of folks for whom that's not the case at all, but the smart ones strive to claim Boston superiority from as nonpartisan a standpoint as possible.

I have no qualms claiming myself as one of the informed. I know I do enough legwork to back that up. And say what you will, but Simmons and Schatz are nothing if not informed.

I've spent the better part of this week (as you can tell) reading everything I can on the topic of VideoGate, in a half-assed effort to determine whether the Pats were actually in the wrong. My motivation may be to defend and/or rationalize, but the reading I've done nevertheless gives me as good and considered a read on the situation as anyone.

So, tell me why I (or those two) should take any guff of any nature from some schmuck who watched SportsCenter, said "deah, Patriots suck, screw 'em!!!" and called it a day. F that. I put in days of effort towards fairness; what's everyone else doing to get to the bottom of things?

If America doesn't want to hear from Simmons and Schatz, they can put someone forward with half a brain to argue against them. Otherwise, drain this cup.

Anyway... they still didn't cheat. They did everything they've been accused of by the NFL, and should be punished for it all. But it's not cheating. Sorry.

More Stuff About "Cheating"

You'll note by those double-quotes that the backlash has inspired a change of heart in me.

Yesterday, I battered the Patriots for the whole videotaping fiasco.  I was more interested in piling on than in defending them, since they don't really deserve much defense for pulling this crap.  The whole thing is embarrassing, stupid, and (worst of all) totally unnecessary.  And as a group, the people running the team are pretty much arrogant, despicable, thoroughly unlikable individuals.  So I feel little need to defend their honor.  On that count, I'm not particularly concerned about how severely they're punished.

It's the perception issues that bother me.  Everyone's having their fun at the Patriots' expense.  There's a lot of misinformation out there, now that the backlash has spiraled so far out of control.  We're now fully engaged in echo-chamber absolutism: someone said "cheating," and everyone flipped out.  When someone tells me it's cheating, I react by saying it should never ever be allowed, no matter what the cheating actually entailed.  That way, I don't have to consider shades of grey!

Enough.

I'm all for punishing rule-breakers, Belichick included.  Any of our six readers will know that I'm as guilty of outraged righteousness as anybody.  But you have to be a moron, a Nazi, or Crazy Jeff in full-throttle rage mode to claim that this somehow explains or negates the Patriots' success.  No.  Rotten as it was to break the rules, it is mostly ignorant and entirely without merit to chalk up the success of the franchise to espionage.

I have a lot to say about this.  (Six posts in one!)

It doesn't appear to have affected Sunday's game
Let's look at what actually happened.  Someone on the coaching staff, certainly at Belichick's command, videotaped the opposing coaches' hand signals against league rules.  That video would later be synced up with video of the play, which would expose what the hand signals represented.  The information gleaned from that sync would allow Belichick, Brady et al to counterpunch by calling audibles, thus increasing the chances of success on a particular play...

...in the subsequent matchup.  That sync-up was not happening in real time.  Nor were they broadcasting into the coaches' box or anything, as far as I can tell.  Plus, the guy was caught in the first quarter, well before the Patriots did any significant damage.  I have a hard time believing anyone can argue that they affected the game.  There goes the forfeit argument.

The notion that they were just using their own preferred angle for postmortem analysis (containing the exact same information as any other overhead video from the game), thereby flipping off the NFL and what they would see as unnecessary, draconian rules, makes far more sense than Belichick cheating so stupidly and obviously.  Not saying it's impossible, just saying the many cries of "it doesn't make any sense" with reference to one of the smartest men ever employed in the NFL is too telling.  (Lehr, the arrogance factor is indeed there, but I don't think that's a sufficient explanation.)

Anyway, once you realize how unlikely it is that they cheated in the middle of any game, the word "cheating" no longer seems appropriate.  And the whole proceeding takes on the form of a witch hunt.  Or, you know, a fabricated scandal.

They aren't the only ones trying to figure out signals
They're just the ones who got caught, and who broke league rules to do it.  Read the remarks from Charley Casserly last winter about the Dolphins' attempts to decode signs.  The Dolphins synced up audio (all of it obtained legally) to the plays in order to determine the same information.  Is that not in the same ballpark as what the Pats did illegally?

Also consider Casserly's story about a team that apparently bugged a lineman in order to catch audio of the opposing quarterback.  So one extra camera on the sideline is a capital crime, but bugging is no big deal?  Yeah, that's consistent.

Lots of teams are trying to do the same exact thing, legally or otherwise.  Nobody should be acting like the Patriots are alone in this.  To hold up Belichick as the one guy who did this is either naive or disingenuous.  They're only alone in being stupid enough to get caught.

Who would be so dumb as to continue using the same signs?
So, the Pats apparently have a reputation for stealing signs.  The league's worst-kept secret, it turns out.  Everyone knows the Pats will be pulling this shit on them.

If it's so commonly known, why would anyone go up against New England without brand-new signals?  They do want to win, don't they?

Why would they not change things up anyway, even without the allegations?  Anyone silly enough to assume their signs wouldn't be stolen deserves to lose.  If baseball teams can change things up frequently and still function, so can football teams.  Sorry, Coach, but you were given a brain as a child, and I expect you to use it.  Sign-stealing should give you a temporary edge, not a permanent one.

Time for the embittered Rules Nazis to come out of hiding
There's another group out there saying the Pats knowingly broke a rule and deserve to be punished.  The rule is there for a reason, there's no excuse for disobedience, etc.

I would ask these hall-monitor wannabes if they've ever driven 56 miles per hour.  Throwing stones from glass houses and whatnot.

I would ask these brilliantly nuanced thinkers to the number of dirty hits and uncalled holding penalties that take place over the course of a football game.  The sum total of uncalled penalty yardage that unassessed by NFL referees since the dawn of man would probably stretch to Neptune.  Never mind the other calls that teams have gotten away with.

Finally, I would ask them to put a number on how many NFL players have smoked weed in the last calendar year.  Good luck enforcing that.  If you took away a draft pick for every player caught with weed, the draft wouldn't happen until 2021.

In short, show me an honest football team that hasn't bent a single rule on any level, and I'll show you twenty illegal acts they performed this past weekend alone.  There's no high road to be taken by any team out there... it's thirty-two low roads.  As in life, you have to decide where to draw a line.

And that's the true problem, isn't it?  Not that a rule was broken, but that a line was crossed.  Keying a car and pissing on that car's tires are both acts of vandalism, but only one of them crosses a line.  Belichick didn't care for the line.  Right and wrong don't enter into it this time.

The "fall" of an otherwise perfect franchise
This is a joke, right?

The New-England-does-things-the-right-way stuff is hogwash.  And that's not news, either.  Bill Belichick is an arrogant scumbag.  Scott Pioli is also an arrogant scumbag; ask Deion Branch, Adam Vinatieri and Asante Samuel about him.  Bob Kraft... arrogant scumbag.  Lots of the players, too, as Human Growth Harrison has reminded us.  Anything the mainstream says about the Pats as a symbol of truth, justice, etc. is unadulterated bullcrap.

This revelation, then, doesn't contradict the team's pristine public image.  It contradicts a bunch of known, proven bullcrap.  They were always capable of something like this.  THEY ARE... WHAT WE THOUGHT THEY WERE!  IF YOU WANNA CROWN THEM, CROWN THEIR ASS!!!

I hate to go here...
...but I have no choice but to wonder what the real motivations are behind all this moral outrage.

Everyone hates the Pats.  They win all the time.  They've benefited from luck breaks more than once.  They've been pumped up as the embodiment of what's right about football: hard work, teamwork, brains, guile, blah blah blah.  People hate that shit.  Everyone's been chomping at the bit to tear them down; now they've got their excuse to attack.

I can empathize with that.  If this were baseball, and I found out the Yankees had a camera set up in center field relaying signs to the dugout, I'd undoubtedly be more bullshit than anyone.  But I'm sure you've already guessed what my #1 motivation for being so bullshit would be.

People have the right to be angry, but as soon as you go past Belichick simply being overcompetitive, greedy, classless and unethical, and start implicating the entire franchise's success because of this one thing, that's when you've started attacking the Pats for your own private reasons.  Ask yourself what your reaction would have been if the Bears were caught doing the same exact thing.  If it's any different, your reasons are personal, and you lose.  If you insist it would be the same, then I sincerely hope you're as honest with yourself as you think you are.

(As for the other side of that coin, I bet you doubt I'd defend another team as voraciously as I'm defending my own.  I might not defend them as thoroughly, but I don't know that I'd be out for blood in the same way.  So suck it.)

Last thing
Look, I'm ashamed of all this.  I'm not asking for sympathy or pity or whatever.  I've copped to my biases.  If the taping affected the game in progress in any way, I'd want to see some forfeits.

But having spent most of the last day thinking about the situation, that really doesn't look like the case.  So I really don't see what the big deal is.  Until we see some proof that they used their camera to steal signals in real time, what they did was break a league regulation that had no bearing on the game's outcome, but gives them a slight edge in the film room (assuming their opponents aren't complete idiots).  Is that really worth a big, nasty scandal?  And would it have gotten to this point if it were anybody else?  I think not.

Let the punishment fit the crime, and give the moral absolutism a rest.

Drew Bledsoe: R.I.P.

Godspeed, you white emperor. Goodnight, you king of Maine, you prince of New England. So long, and thanks for all the picks fish.



I'm actually pretty sad about this. I always liked Drew Bledsoe. He was the first legitimate hero to play for the Pats in my time as a fan (which does predate his arrival). His was the first Pats uniform I ever had. His Super Bowl run in 1996-97 was the first I was able to really enjoy.

For eight seasons, he was the face of the Patriots. He symbolized my team's newfound legitimacy. He shepherded the team from the very bottom to the verge of greatness. He was the personification of the Bill Parcells-led rise to annual respectability. He was the best thing the team had going for it during the Pete Carroll water-treading era. Two playoff appearances with that knucklehead Carroll, and both of them were due in large part to Bledsoe's leadership on the field.

And we wouldn't have won that first Super Bowl without his heroic performance in the AFC Championship game in Pittsburgh. Tom Brady got hurt, and Bledsoe bailed him out, with a little help from his friends. No Bledsoe = we lose. We lose = no "dynasty." That's one of the footnotes that gets lost in the rush to stick Brady in Canton... none of what's happened since would have come true without Drew Bledsoe.

For that, I owe him a debt of gratitude.

I wish the rest of New England would realize that. Despite all that he accomplished for us, Bledsoe was a tragic figure in Boston. Never mind that a good 80% of the fans would never, ever have become Patriots fans if Bledsoe hadn't arrived. As a traditional pocket passer in an era where quarterbacks were becoming more mobile, he became an easy target for the fans. He was never good enough for them, and they always took such delight in nitpicking his style and performance.

He's so emotionless. He's not a real leader. He's not athletic like Mark Brunell and Kordell Stewart. He pats the ball.

Man, I haven't thought about that ridiculous ball-patting shit in years. That was the best thing about Bledsoe's departure (besides the Super Bowls)... never again having to endure that stupid shit from those stupid people about him patting the ball. Yeah, he patted the ball... right before throwing every single one of his touchdown passes, you fucking nitwits.

The point of all that is that he was treated worse than shit by the fans and media, but deserved pretty much none of it. He was a good quarterback. Not great, but definitely good enough.

What's so remarkable to me is that he was perceived as a failure despite having done pretty much as well as he could have. If he wasn't giving his best, that'd be one thing, but I don't think anyone with a brain for football can question his effort. Let's not forget that when Mo Lewis hit him in 2001, while running for a first down as so many people wished he'd do more often, he nearly DIED. Then he busted his ass to get back on the field as soon as he could. He wasn't a jerk. He wasn't mailing games in. He wasn't pulling goofy Manny Ramirez superstar shit on or off the field. He gave New England his best. And people still killed him, just because he didn't win a Super Bowl. That right there is some ignorant shit. Going to such extremes to blame a #1 overall pick for not bringing home a Super Bowl, like he's a big failure or something, just exposes how little the Boston media and fans understand football. Take him down a peg or two, sure. Cut him, go in a different direction. But don't shit on the guy. Don't be happy about his predicament.

Anyway, when Bledsoe was unceremoniously benched in favor of future Pro Bowler and sperm rocket Brady, and was subsequently traded out of town, he had every right to flip us all off on his way out of town. But instead, he handled it with class. He thanked Patriots fans graciously for their years of support, even though the vocal majority of fans had all but declared a state holiday in celebration of his benching and departure. And still he took the high road. I appreciate that.

I felt loyal to Bledsoe. Still do, as you can probably tell. After Brady's injury in that first playoff run, I felt that Bledsoe had earned the right to start the Super Bowl. I thought he'd been screwed out of his job, that an injured Brady would be a liability, and that benching a healthy player of Bledsoe's caliber in favor of an injured first-year starter was effectively an insult. I was wrong, of course, but I don't regret feeling that loyalty. Unlike the majority of Patriots fans, I always rooted for Bledsoe to succeed. Even in that Dallas uniform, I would have liked to see him do well. And I'm sad that he didn't.

That's not to say I wish he'd stayed. I'm glad his downward spiral happened elsewhere. But in my view, he never got the credit he deserved. He played a crucial role in the construction of the Patriots dynasty; I hope people recognize his achievements someday, once they're done polishing the bronze on Brady's Hall of Fame bust.* And I hope history is kinder to Drew Bledsoe than the present was.

* - Speaking of Canton, Bledsoe's numbers present an interesting Hall of Fame argument. He's #7 all-time in passing yards, and #5 in both completions and attempts, which if nothing else is a sign of persistent success. While I loathe that argument in baseball, you can't amass numbers like that if you're that bad. They don't say anything about greatness, but you definitely can't say he sucks. Ultimately I think he and another similar player in his area of the record books, Vinny Testaverde, are more likely to be left out, proving how little numbers matter when it comes to the football HOF. But the fact that there's an argument to be made is proof enough that his treatment and perception have been unfair.