Nope--not me, just a Pats fan who has decided to take off the homer glasses, I suspect. I agree with some of what he says--I think you're all kidding yourselves about the likely consequences if (and it's admittedly a big if) Walsh has that tape. Personally, I'd put the odds of that at about 30% or so, but that's just a guess obviously. It's still a very large possibility that he just let his mouth overload his butt in Jan., but the phrasing of his initial statement to the press implying things other than what was known then (i.e, the defensive signals taping) is intriguing. No one on this board seems to want to even consider the fact that not only does Walsh produce the tape, but that the Pats may in fact have been responsible for doing this. It is a possibility, how high I don't know either and neither does anyone else here.
Interesting question for all of you and, once again, solely a hypothetical--what if (a) Walsh produces the tape, (b) says that the Pats ordered him to film it and other bad acts (i.e., he was the designated video scumbag in the Dept. to do the team's dirty work and that's why no one else knew about this among the other folks interviewed--after all, the Pats are notorious for compartmentalizing knowledge within their org, which you must admit is exactly what you'd do if you were going to be cheating, that way very few people would know about it) and (c) passes a lie detector test on all this. The last part is where I could see this going if he does indeed have the tape as a way to break any "he said, he said" stalemate.
An even worse (d) that no one else here seems to consider, but is certainly possible, would be if he has evidence of other bad acts (like the use of those two funny extra frequencies the team seemed to have on its headsets when they were caught last fall--anyone else remember that?). The shenanigans don't have to end at the Rams tape, you know, as there's been plenty of other smoke around the Pats on these issues as you'll recall certainly from the fall, when guys like Rod Marinelli and another HC whose name escapes me (Gruden perhaps?) both said that their headsets often mysteriously went out at key times (usually 3rd downs) when playing at Gillette. Peter King at the combine this year said something similar, ie., that other coaches and players in the League thought that there was too much smoke around the Pats for there not to be fire.
My personal favorite came from February, when I saw two different board threads elsewhere on different boards where folks each said they heard Dan LeBatard (Miami Dolphins beat reporter) on the radio say that he had it from an ex-Pats QB that there used to be a mysterious voice on their internal QB line who would periodically come in at the last second with a new play and that that play ALWAYS WORKED. This QB asked several times who that was, but never got an answer. According to one of the threads, the ex-QB was Flutie, who then several days later incurred Dan's wrath by not being willing to go on the record with the story he'd told him just a few days earlier. Note that I didn't hear this myself, but merely read it on a board, so it could be BS, but as noted above, I saw it on two different boards by two folks who each claimed to hear it--did they, don't know for sure, but if that is legit, that's quite another piece to the puzzle.
As noted in another thread, anyone wonder why the Pats haven't been more forceful with the Herald or more generally on this? For ex., taking more than two weeks to come out with a carefully worded statement denying all this in Feb? (The same carefully worded statement (the NE Patriots did not do this--not this did not happen) they repeated this week.)
Finally, for all the hate for Tomasse, anyone here consider (a) the guy was just doing his job (perhaps poorly, but still) and (b) it's not up to him ultimately to publish a story, but his editor, who must determine how credible the story is all things considered. The editor is really the guy you may want to crucify here. If Tomasse turns out to be right here, how many of the Tomasse haters will man up and apologize to him--not many I suspect.....
PS Bonus musing--someone here or elsewhere on this board told me that I'd be defending all this if it were the Bills accused of this. Depends on the evidence, obviously, but if it's pretty clear my team cheated (as yours did last fall, of which there's no doubt), I would be ashamed of my team and not condone them for it as many here seem to do. Cheating's cheating, full, end, stop. I try to retain some objectivity in all this--it is just a game played by millionaires, as my father is fond of saying, after all. Nothing worth lowering my moral standards for. I would be saddened, no doubt, but I wouldn't try to blame the rest of the world for problems my team caused itself by taking the actions it did. Then again, with Ralph Wilson in charge and with folks involved in our team like Marv Levy and **** Jauron (one of your local boys) I don't really worry too much about cheating in Buffalo actually--not spending money for players and moving to Toronto, perhaps, but not cheating.
