Halifax_Pats_Fan

One thing that was overlooked in this is how Bill was and always will be a student of film. Steve Belichick was awesome at it at the Naval Acadamy.

This is the kind of thing BB used to do since he was a young kid, and even at that age he was quite the study of game film as his dad used to take film home to him. This taught him how to get a competitive advantage at an early age.

Film study, coaching and strategy is what BB is all about. It is his core as a person.

And because of this I don't feel as if he truly thought he did anything wrong.

The league, well, I guess we will find out today or tomorrow...

I guess what I am trying to say is that even though he was found guilty of filming his competition, I understand his reasoning behind it, even though the league may not.

Film study and football for BB have always gone hand and hand.

true_patriot

Bingo!!!
Bingo!!!
We go Bingo!!!

DarrylS

Something so simple and basic to this team, has gotten so complex and misintrepreted.

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

BradyManny

So, I've been out of the country for one week and I come back to all this....what a media zoo.

So, since I've been gone so long, let me briefly just say I agree with the OP. I don't think what BB and the staff did is a big deal at all - and if anyone other than BB or the Pats did it, it'd be a non-issue.

I've heard the standard: it's against league rules, so it doesn't matter if it's not a big deal!!! But has the media become such mindless drones that they have lost the ability to reserve their own judgements on rules? Since when in this country do we blindly accept rules as they are given to us? If anything, our instinct is to examine rules and laws under a great deal of scrutiny when they become relevant, not simply say "a rule is a rule". Where did the usual grey area go? It's laughable how black and white the media has made this.

If the Colts did it, if Dungy did this, the media would be talking about how lame a rule it is, and how what they did wasn't that bad and was part of the game.

DW Toys

Cousins,
We have now heard from every idiot from Hines Ward that we cheated in the Steeler wins, to Strahan saying this is no different than a famous recent NBA scandal. Let's get one thing straight out there to all Pats bashers and trolls. The NFL allows "cheating"!!!!!!! It is not illegal for one NFL team to "steal" signs form the other and use them from their benefit. The definition of steal is: To take (the property of another) without right or permission. People that is "cheating" which the NFL DOES allow.

Here are the other accomplices in this scandal who I will now name:Romeo Crennel, Herm Edwards, Brian Billick, Tom Coughlin,Mike Tomlin, Mike Nolan, Gary Kubiak, Mike Holmgren, Tony Dungy, John Fox, Rod Marinelli, Jeff Fisher, Mike Shanahan, Marvin Lewis, Joe Gibbs, Wade Phillips, Mike McCarthy, Brad Childress, Lane Kiffin, Cam Cameron, Norv Turner, Jon Gruden, Sean Payton, Lovie Smith, Eric Mangini, Ken Whisenhunt, Dick Jauron, Bobby Petrino, Andy Reid, Scott Linehan, Jack Del Rio. Every one of these head coaches now, or when they were assistants, did know or condone the "stealing" of the other teams signs for an advantage. Even the NFL players like Woodson and Faulk admitted last night on the NFL Network that they "cheated" by trying to look over and see what the other teams signs were.

Lets keep this in perspective. They cannot call BB a "cheater" because every team in the NFL does know and condone their coaching department to do the same practice of "legally????" stealing the other teams signs. What BB got caught at was going to the next level with electronic technologies and video tapping what the NFL has always allowed.

Many NFL players say this is all common practice. Gruden was the funniest but said this was not a big deal. All the signs are changed week to week anyway. Why? guess what?........The defense signals are changed continuously because like Shanahan says, he has a coach with binoculars trying to decode the signals of the other team from the first quarter on. Every team knows that.

So to send BB to "trial" here because the NFL oddly has allowed "cheating" is ridiculous. He has been doing what all 32 teams in the NFL do and is condoned. Is he being punished just for being a product of the system that he took to a different (and edgy) level? Or because all the other teams what to drag down a pretty good organization and perhaps the best head coach (with very bad social and media skills) ever?

He can be taken to task by the commissioner for his well known tape affinity and be chastised for taking the allowed "cheating" to a electronic level. I defy all of the talking heads to explain the big difference of taping the signals and in a Mission Impossible way, or having the defensive signal callers be viewed from the opposition coaches box or sidelines and the signals be charted and sent down to the bench immediately. If anything, BB and his tape method would appear slower to respond to. O.K. he got cited for a league violation on what was his "interpretation". Cheater, I don't think so unless you indite the other 31. His ONLY advantage was the ability to see the signals and analyse them himself perhaps. For the future games? NO WAY. The signals are changed by the week and all 32 teams know that someone on the other team is "spying" on them. Who knows why he did it? I challenge anybody in the world to say that his method of "cheating" was any faster than the methods rest of the other 31 teams cheating. Remember, the NFL DOES allow this "stealing" as legal. He will get made an example of. All this other crap about "cheater", then put all the rest of the 31 teams in as well!

To personally attack one man or a team for the sins of the rest of the league because he had a better idea (perhaps only), when the NFL condones the practice of stealing signals and they know it happens, is baloney. Cheating? absolutely no way (not in the present context of the NFL as it allows stealing), breaking a applied NFL rule on just how one can "cheat". Yes. Film is his thing and the NFL said no.
DW Toys