Pats spied before SB XXXVI upset
Posted: Saturday February 02, 2008 11:14AM ET

New allegations have emerged about a Patriots employee taping the Rams' final walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI. According to a source, a member of the team's video department filmed the Rams' final walkthrough before that 2002 game. The next day, the Patriots upset St. Louis, 20-17, on a last-second field goal by Adam Vinatieri for their first championship. A walkthrough involves practicing plays at reduced speed without contact or pads. It is common for teams to film their own walkthroughs and practices. According to a source close to the team during the 2001 season, here's what happened. On Feb. 2, 2002, one day before the Patriots' Super Bowl game against heavily favored St. Louis in New Orleans, the Patriots visited the Superdome for their final walkthrough. After completing the walkthrough, they had their team picture taken and the Rams then took the field. According to the source, a member of the team's video staff stayed behind after attending the team's walkthrough and filmed St. Louis' walkthrough. At no point was he asked to identify himself or produce a press pass, the source said. The cameraman rode the media shuttle back to the hotel with news photographers when the Rams walkthrough was completed, the source said.

2/2/2008 2:25:12 PM

i think Goodell is gonna regret this whole spygate punishment thing when its said and done

^post a link with that please so it gives it some credibility

[Edited on February 2, 2008 at 2:27 PM. Reason : g]

2/2/2008 2:27:33 PM

^^ link or source?

[Edited on February 2, 2008 at 2:27 PM. Reason : .]

2/2/2008 2:27:35 PM

you never hear of Peyton cheating

2/2/2008 2:27:54 PM

but he does break into cars^

2/2/2008 2:28:25 PM

he will win an Oscar one day

2/2/2008 2:29:13 PM

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/football/patriots/view.bg?articleid=1070762

2/2/2008 2:29:44 PM

here's the source: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs07/news/story?id=3227245

2/2/2008 2:29:45 PM

Fuck the Patriots

2/2/2008 2:31:21 PM

Wow the Boston Herald posted this story?

2/2/2008 2:31:39 PM

see this walsh guy doesnt really know his own value

intelligence, mental intelligence or information cannot be counted as stolen information. its been proven in a court of law.

so i think he needs to come out and say everything instead of being a pussy and waiting for someone to pay him $texas to say what he knows on camera.

Quote :

"some from the 2007 preseason, and the rest from 2006."

this gets me 2, they only penalized them for the 2007 stuff, not for the 2006. I think Roger has ALOT of answering ahead of him and that he screwed up with the penalties.

[Edited on February 2, 2008 at 2:34 PM. Reason : f]

2/2/2008 2:32:38 PM

^^^ but but but everyone does this! its not cheating! Tom Brady rules!

[Edited on February 2, 2008 at 2:32 PM. Reason : f]

2/2/2008 2:32:39 PM

all the patriots have to do is play a team this year; doesn't matter how close it is...

see, they've played the giants, have tape on the giants, know how to beat the giants,

therefore, people thinking this is not gonna be a blowout don't believe the patriots cheat.

2/2/2008 2:32:42 PM

i for one like the fact that they tape other teams defenses

2/2/2008 2:33:31 PM

you also like to suck dick

2/2/2008 2:35:36 PM

(no homo)


fucking cockrag

2/2/2008 2:37:44 PM

Belichick, Bonds, Clemmons would make a hell of a team

2/2/2008 2:43:22 PM

Clemmons? who is clemmons? get out now, you fail.

2/2/2008 2:48:36 PM

wtf is the senate doing sticking their noses in? steroids is on thing since they are illegal, how is taping a team the senate's business?

Quote :

"see, they've played the giants, have tape on the giants, know how to beat the giants, "

every team has tape on every other team. what the pats did that was illegal in the jets game is tape the coaches

i dont see how taping a pre superbowl practice could really help a team. they had already seen 18 games played by the rams

2/2/2008 3:35:23 PM

^it was the final walk through before the sb......they knew which play was gonna be called from each formation etc....most teams script the first 25 or so plays of a game anyways.....and looking back, the rams had the worst offensive showing in the first half in that super bowl... 3 points

2/2/2008 3:37:38 PM

the senate has every right if the NFL violated antitrust laws considering its the only way to get some of these guys to talk

2/2/2008 3:38:53 PM

^ actually, they don't

the NFL is exempt from antitrust laws

2/2/2008 3:53:01 PM

You sure? I always thought only MLB had the anti-trust exemption.

2/2/2008 11:09:00 PM

any man who has played madden with their roommate/brother/cousin/friend/etc should say

who cares? I still win

2/2/2008 11:11:46 PM

From Dec 2006, about TV rights... but the same senator
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2690171

Quote :

"Maybe it was simply the rantings of a man in his final days as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee before Democrats officially take control of Congress. Or perhaps just a grandstand play by a guy whose Philadelphia-area constituents are caught in the middle of the ongoing battle between The NFL Network and Comcast Corp., the cable broadcasting giant. Whatever his motivation, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., claimed at the end of a Thursday hearing that he will sponsor legislation to strip the NFL of the antitrust exemption that permits the league to negotiate its television contracts for all 32 franchises, rather than have the teams do so individually. "

2/3/2008 12:42:30 AM

Quote :

" the NFL is exempt from antitrust laws"

i don't know the exact details, but my understanding is that when you get an exemption to anti-trust laws that your organization is going to wind up receiving some measure of federal oversight in order to maintain that exemption

same reason congress gives a rat's ass about steroids in baseball instead of just leaving it as a DEA matter, or why congress steps in when players unions go on strike

2/3/2008 10:19:12 AM

I think the Pats need to have the hammer slammed down on them. This shit has got to stop. Here is my proposal:

Patriots forfeit all games from this season.
They are stripped of all their postseason accolades since 2002.
They must relinquish all revenues generated from this season's playoff games.
They lose all of their draft picks for the next year.
They are banned from the playoffs for next five years.

Finally, the NFL commissioner needs to be canned. He has clearly been complicit with their cheating, so he has to go.

2/3/2008 1:25:55 PM

maybe you should wait for real evidence first

2/3/2008 2:16:42 PM

2/3/2008 2:25:31 PM

Belichick to be suspended for a year if allegations are true.......... http://www.profootballtalk.com/rumormill.htm

2/3/2008 3:15:18 PM

^^^ unfortunately, the NFL DESTROYED the evidence so it wouldn't see the light of day. Thus the reason the commish should be canned

2/3/2008 5:23:37 PM

tagliabue's corpse could do a better job

2/3/2008 5:39:28 PM

i swear to god the pats use illegal communications to brady's helmet.

2/3/2008 5:50:04 PM

Quote :

" Patriots forfeit all games from this season. They are stripped of all their postseason accolades since 2002. They must relinquish all revenues generated from this season's playoff games. They lose all of their draft picks for the next year. They are banned from the playoffs for next five years."

Go away... this is fucking absurd. Yeah, lets punish the Patriots for years that there is absolutely no evidence they did anything wrong. Nothing is going to be stripped but the only possible things that can be are their first Super Bowl and their first game this year.

2/3/2008 6:46:30 PM

Quote :

""I'm okay with it," Jaworski said during the network's three-hour pre-game extravaganza. WHAT?!?!?!?! Jaws' justification? "It's going on." Okay, Jaws. Murder is "going on," too. Should it be legalized? Plenty of bad things are "going on." Does that make them okay?"

PFT is taking this so seriously, they know this is the only thing that will keep most visitors coming back during the gap between the super bowl and free agency

2/3/2008 8:04:03 PM

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/football/nfl/02/15/patriots.sued.ap/index.html

2/15/2008 6:51:36 PM

mk

2/15/2008 6:52:24 PM

^^ LOL.

God this shit needs to go away.

This senator is just trying to get face time, and use sports as a way to divert people away from the problems up in Penn.

I'm just not sure why people are so shocked that when millions and millions of dollars are on the line athletes and organizations aren't going to push the line anyway they can to get an edge. To me steriods is crossing a line, this video taping crap is not. I see a clear difference, I don't know how people have managed to lump these two things together.

2/15/2008 7:55:55 PM

^read tonight that Matt Walsh, the old video assistant has actual tapes in his possesion....not lookin to good for ole belechick

2/16/2008 2:11:34 AM

who cares? don't throw an up arrow at me when what you say has nothing to do with what I said.

I don't care if he has copies of the ram's playbook from 2001 that were handed out to all the players. This is an annoying and insignificant story to me, put rules in place from here on and enforce and move on.

2/16/2008 2:23:19 AM

how is viedotaping not "crossing a line" when its spelled out by the nfl in their rules as cheating

guess i just dont know the difference between crossing the line & cheating

2/16/2008 2:44:31 AM

^yeah, I'm also curious to know how steroids is considered cheating but stealing the opposing team's playbook wouldn't be cheating.

2/16/2008 6:35:57 AM

to me it is about the resulting advantage. one i feel actually does, the other I've yet to have one person point out to me how it is advantageous.

if someone can prove to me that having defensive signals of another team taped lead to some sort of significant advantage, then i might change my mind. until then I don't see what it does.

Also, keep in mind every team already has every other team's playbook.

[Edited on February 16, 2008 at 7:28 AM. Reason : .]

2/16/2008 7:17:24 AM

defensive signals taped = knowing what play the defense is calling, and since there are receivers in the QB's helmet then plays can be audibled which specifically match the exact defensive play

if anything, that's MORE of an advantage than one person using steroids, since one person cannot make an entire team win

as for the super bowl, if it's true that the Pats video taped the Rams' walk-through then the patriots had a perfect blueprint for the first 25 or so plays that the Rams were going to run in the order they were going to run them.

there's a difference between "having a playbook" and knowing which play is being called from that playbook at that moment.

[Edited on February 16, 2008 at 8:32 AM. Reason : .]

2/16/2008 8:31:38 AM

^^look at the stats from the first half of the 2002 super bowl, the pats supposedly taped the walkthrough where the first 25 plays or so are scripted....The rams only scored 3 points that have, their lowest of the season....

2/16/2008 9:07:52 AM

FWIW I read somewhere that the rams said that during the walkthrough they went over red-zone plays.

2/16/2008 9:36:46 AM

^^^ get your facts straight, the receiver in the qb's helmet is turned off after they break the huddle, their is no more communication this is done by the NFL. That means you are telling me, in 24 seconds(more like 14 so they have time to get to the line and call the play) they have to see from across the field the defensive signals, interpret what that call is which isn't exactly an easy thing to do quickly, then pick a play that matches up against that play call, get it into the qb, to the team, up to the line to call the play? GET FUCKING real.

^^ what was supposidly taped by the patriots was a walk through of redzone plays, not the first plays of the game. So what you are saying has no relevance. also, no team scripts the first 25 plays of the game, they might script the first series but that is it. Beyond that situation changes the plays, your an idiot if you think they just have a list of 25 plays that they start calling in a row.

Next please.

2/16/2008 10:24:52 AM

who pissed in this guys^ cereal this morning?

2/16/2008 10:50:11 AM

he's just mad the rams dashed the titans' superbowl hopes on a single agonizing play.

2/16/2008 10:58:11 AM

even if they did tape the rams walkthrough, perhaps STL's coaches should have been a bit more percecptive and realized that their first ~25 plays were getting shut the fuck down, then make the needed adjustments. However, I call BS on that considering the Rams scored first.

To me, it's a bit like the OSU/Miami call. Yes, it was questionable, and I'm not trying to debate that in this thread. But, if Miami truly was the better team, they would have scored when they had 4 downs from the 2 yd line. If the Rams were the better team, they would have proven it over the remainder of the game.

2/16/2008 11:25:06 AM