What's there to apologize for? I stand by everything I wrote. I never said for a fact there was a tape (in fact, look at my last posts here before I got snowed under at work--70% chance Walsh was in over his head and 30% there was a tape), in fact, I was the one who kept reminding folks that no one knew what the facts were at the time, although my odds of it existing were higher than most folks' here admittedly. I still suspect that your team and its coach push the envelope every chance they get (sometimes beyond the rules, as was the case last year in the initial Spygate case), although I think this experience overall may chasten them a bit.
Your odds of it existing were NILL. NONE. ZIP. ZERO.
In fact, as reported by the Times this week (and others, like Peter King in February at the combine talking to other players and coaches from around the League), it sounds like the Pats seem to have been the center of controversy internally in League circles for some time on suspicion of various dirty tricks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/s...tml?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Patriots&st=nyt&oref=slogin
I still suspect that there's some truth to that article (my personal favorites being the headset complaints of Del Rio and Marinelli, among others).
Goodell put these to rest also. There was no fault of the Patriots. What people don't understand is that the NFL has personnel there taking care of the headsets. NFL Personnel.
Personally, I think it all comes from a coach (and possibly owner, too, if some old articles I've read on Kraft portray him accurately)
What old articles would this be? Seriously, are you that much of a douche that you just can't admit you were WRONG and leave? You have to sit there and start making things up about the team's owner also?
who has a near psychotic aversion to losing (witness his running off the field this year before the game was over--I don't mean this to start controversy here or impugn the guy's toughness somehow, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me if he shed a few tears in the privacy of the tunnel that day and that's why he got off the field so quickly) and will thus do just about anything it takes to win, right or wrong. I still don't believe he "misinterpreted" that rule--even today we heard from Walsh that he knew that he shouldn't get caught and I recall last year that Matt Estrella fought to not hand over his tapes, both in NY and Green Bay, where he'd been caught the year before. That indicates to me at least that the underlings knew what they were doing was wrong, but Belichick didn't? Sounds like Goodell doesn't believe him either, but that's water under the bridge.
Matt Estrella didn't fight to not hand over a tape in Green Bay? Again, you of the poor facts who just don't know what the F**K you are talking about. The Pats didn't even play Green Bay last year. WOW. Talk about ignorant.
As for you claiming that they knew what they were doing was wrong. If someone I didn't know came up to me and tried to take my camera away, I would fight like hell to keep it from them also. Estrella didn't know those guys from a hole in the wall.
All that said, without proof of these suspicions there was nothing new here for the League to act on, so I can see why there was no new punishment. The two new things brought up (player on IR and scalping) don't merit any additional real penalties, nor did, in my mind, the idea that the team was taping offensive signals, which to me is what they already knew about the first go around. I went on record on both of those previously as you may or may not recall.
How could you have gone on record about the IR issue and the scalping when it was a NEW issue? Yes, the offensive player substitution signals wasn't new, but the others were. And one of which was the players, not the team.
I think Felger said it best this afternoon (I caught that portion while getting a shoe shine), that this episode didn't really change anyone's minds on the Pats either way--folks in Boston stand fully behind them and even I would say that they have some vindication today that the bad didn't get worse, while the rest of the country still views them with suspicion (and before you tell me, I know none of you care about that and that's fine with me, too).
Felger is a GreenBay fan and an idiot at heart. He's one of the many mediots who crucified the Patriots and blew this situation out of proportion.
PS On the SB tape bit, I must chuckle, however, that there was no hew and cry here last week when Reiss wrote that if there was a tape (and this was before we knew for sure that whether it existed) the Pats would have the book thrown at them for it most likely based on respondeat superior. That's what I'd been saying, but was repeatedly shouted down about that here.
I find it hilarious that you ignore the fact that Reiss pre-empted himself by saying he didn't believe that Walsh had a video of the Rams Walk-thru and was putting it out as a hypothetical.
YOU did no such thing. YOU were saying it was damn near fact that Walsh had a tape and were crucifying the Pats for it.
PSS I do look forward to coming around here periodically and having more civil discourse on football topics other than Spygate--I'm a football fan(etic) and not just a Spygate fan.
