VectorPrime
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2010
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Forgive me but I have always been under the impression, like most Patriots fans, that taping game signals is not against the rules. What was against the rules is taping them from the sideline past 2006. However, in the OTL article it reads
"IN AUGUST 2000, before a Patriots preseason game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jimmy Dee, the head of New England's video department, approached one of his charges, Matt Walsh, with a strange assignment: He wanted Walsh to film the Bucs' offensive and defensive signals, the arm waving and hand folding that team coaches use to communicate plays and formations to the men on the field. Walsh was 24 years old, a lifelong New Englander and Patriots fan. He was one of the few employees Belichick retained that season, his first as the team's coach. The practice of decoding signals was universal in football -- a single stolen signal can change a game -- with advance scouts jotting down notes, then matching the signal to the play. The Patriots created a novel spying system that made the decoding more dependable.
Walsh later told investigators that, at the time, he didn't know the NFL game operations manual forbade taping signals."
So does the game operations manual forbid the taping signals or is this factually incorrect like it says? If so how come we were under the impression it wasn't? And if not, what is the article referring to?
"IN AUGUST 2000, before a Patriots preseason game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jimmy Dee, the head of New England's video department, approached one of his charges, Matt Walsh, with a strange assignment: He wanted Walsh to film the Bucs' offensive and defensive signals, the arm waving and hand folding that team coaches use to communicate plays and formations to the men on the field. Walsh was 24 years old, a lifelong New Englander and Patriots fan. He was one of the few employees Belichick retained that season, his first as the team's coach. The practice of decoding signals was universal in football -- a single stolen signal can change a game -- with advance scouts jotting down notes, then matching the signal to the play. The Patriots created a novel spying system that made the decoding more dependable.
Walsh later told investigators that, at the time, he didn't know the NFL game operations manual forbade taping signals."
So does the game operations manual forbid the taping signals or is this factually incorrect like it says? If so how come we were under the impression it wasn't? And if not, what is the article referring to?