was wondering, do you guys think there will a fallout of spygate in the distant future?
after BB doesnt coach anymore? after most of the players from this decades team are retired, after Kraft maybe doesnt own the team anymore?
or do u think itll just be a footnote, sometimes mentioned in the future, but less and less as time goes by, w/o ever any greater depth to it?
or do u believe some of these guys, after they have to stakes anymore, will come out and reveal more things?
just wondering
Well, you've named three different time frames.
"after BB doesn't coach any more". My guess is he's going to coach for another seven to ten years. So, will it still be a story eight or nine years from now? Yeah, it will be. The folks on this board and in New England see it one way. The rest of the country sees it along a spectrum from the haters who feel it invalidates everything the Brady/Belichick Pats accomplished to serious football fans who feel it taints but doesn't destroy the legacy of the team.
"most of the players from this decades team are retired." well, a lot of the players from the 2001 team are already retired and this team's players will play for anywhere from one to seven or so more years depending on abilities and injuries, so a slightly shorter time frame (according to the NFLPA, the average NFL career is 3 1/2 years, with, of course, notable exceptions). Yeah, Spygate will be around for the next five or six years no doubt.
"after Kraft...doesn't own the team anymore" well, i don't think the Krafts will sell this team in the lifetimes of anyone on this board, barring some sort of personal or financial catastrophe in their lives. So, will Spygate be around for the forseeable future? Yeah, I'm afraid it will be. People will never forget it. They won't all be like the haters and say we should give the Lombardi's back, but it will be a lingering question in the back of fans' minds.
I wish that weren't the case, but living outside of New England, it changes how the team is viewed. It was a bone-headed, brand-damaging mistake by a group of guys who should have known better. There are no two ways about it.
Doesn't matter a hoot that others were doing it and didn't get caught. What matters is that the most successful franchise of the post cap and free agency era did it and did get caught, whatever technical arguments the Pats may make in their defense.
You probably think I'm being pretty hard on the team for a long standing fan who apologizes to no one here or elsewhere for his Pats creds, but that's how I see it.
I defended BB and the Pats to lots of people here in New York in many heated discussions after it happened (something that many of you never had to do), but in my heart I was deeply disappointed.