ESPN may be trying to breathe life into an old story after the release of their Outside The Lines report set to appear in their magazine this week with more details on the 2007 SpyGate story, but for anyone who has had to endure this mess since it started, Bill Belichick already said about all he needed to when he attacked it head on this past January.
While in a press conference that Belichick and the Patriots called because they felt they “needed to say something”, Belichick was confronted by a reporter who brought up the videotaping they did of opposing teams’ signals prior to being sanctioned by the league in 2007.
Belichick got visibly angry, and went right after him. Here’s the transcript from that exchange:
Reporter: Bill, you said you try to err on the caution with the rules, but the videotaping, you were pushing the envelope on that, did that change that?
Belichick: “Look, that’s a whole other discussion. The guy’s giving signals in front of 80,000 people, OK? So we filmed him making signals out in front of 80,000 people like there were a lot of other teams doing at that time too. Forget about that. If were wrong, then we’ve been disciplined for that.”
Reporter: That’s clearly not trying to do everything you can stay on the side of caution.
Belichick: “The guy is in front of 80,000 people. 80,000 people saw it. Everybody on the sideline saw it. Everybody sees our guy in front of 80,000 people. There he is. So, it was wrong and we were disciplined for it. That’s it. Again, we are never going to do it again and anything that’s close, we aren’t going to do it either.”
Reporter: I’m talking about what you said a few minutes ago about staying on the side of caution.
Belichick: “We always do, but I mean anything that’s even remotely close, we err on the side of caution.”
Don’t expect much from Belichick on the matter. It took eight years for him to finally speak his mind on this topic and he made it clear when he erupted that New England wasn’t on an island with that practice.
But that, to no one’s surprise, is only mentioned in passing in the article, which spans over 11,000 words. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
