New England has just burrowed itself out of a stomach-churning, headline crazy summer blitz based on profound but shaky legs. It has emerged victorious, but with undying scars. Forget the NFL’s ineptitude in the Deflategate witch-hunt; I’m curious about the public’s reaction to it, and the growing blot on the Patriots’ reputation.
In a May ESPN poll, 63% of the nation agreed that the New England Patriots were cheaters, and 60% supported commissioner Roger Goodell’s 4-game suspension of Tom Brady. Even without real basis for their arguments, every man, woman and child rushed to throw tar on the Patriots’ image. Why were they so eager to do so?
A recent Sports Illustrated story revealed that in the last decade, “at least 19 NFL franchises took precautions against the Patriots that they didn’t take against any other opponent.” In other words, nearly two-thirds of NFL teams accused New England alone of foul play.
From Sports Illustrated: “At least five teams have swept their hotels, locker rooms or coaches’ booths in New England for listening devices, sometimes hiring outside professionals. None have been found.”
Former Colts coach Tony Dungy revealed that Peyton Manning used to talk with coaches in the hallways instead of the locker room at Gillette Stadium, because he feared that the locker room was bugged.
The Colts have never found any listening devices.
And this nugget from Sports Illustrated: “Bill Belichick tells his staff which players on the opposing team were not on the flight to New England. It’s not clear how Belichick knows. But he does.”
Very mysterious. He must be in cahoots with airport employees around the country to take notice of who is on these flights. Maybe he even goes to the airports himself in disguise.
Or we can look at a simpler answer from ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio—“By league rule, injured players who don’t make the trip must be downgraded to ‘out’… the team definitely has an obligation to immediately let the league, the opponent and the media know.”
So it is pretty clear how Belichick knows. He reads the injury report that everyone on the planet has access to.
Plenty of other teams bend the rules and, according to a compilation of scandals at yourteamcheats.com, New England is right in the middle of the league in its number of infractions. So if these accusations almost always come up empty, and if there is ample opportunity to spread them to all teams, why does general consensus still hold that Belichick and the Patriots are always cheating? How do you get a reputation when that reputation is based on nothing?
On the face of it, it seems obvious—they win and they are unlikeable. But it is not that simple.
The Patriots have owned the NFL the last fifteen years, but other sports have had dynasties, too. Over its 17 consecutive winning seasons the San Antonio Spurs have won 11 division titles and five NBA championships. In Major League Baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals have amassed nine division titles, four National League championships and two World Series since 2000.
Are they hated? According to a recent Harris Poll, the Cardinals are the eighth most loved team in baseball. At the end of last season, ESPN named the Spurs the sixth favorite NBA team in the country.
St. Louis is in the midst of an FBI investigation surrounding its hacking into the Astros’ scouting system. During media sessions, Spurs’ coach Gregg Popovich leaves reporters shaking in their boots. But these teams are still loved and respected.
Well, one could argue, Belichick isn’t easy to like. He gets a case of the mumbles at every press conference and won’t give reporters the time of day. Poor Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post couldn’t get much out of him and once wrote that Belichick, “went out of his way to be rude and disrespectful.”
Harsh. But when talking with the media, are coaches genial and friendly? Gregg Popovich is certainly not. After a playoff loss last season, the Spurs coach filled his press conference with solitary answers like, “a lot,” and “I do. At times, he merely shook his head. Towards the end, he let reporters know that, “these questions are unbelievable.”
But maybe mumbling and spewing clichés is worse than brashness because they show disinterest. (In fact, Belichick can be quite insightful when talking with local media outlets, but that is neither here nor there.) Maybe that is what is unattractive about the Patriots’ coach—he gives off a scent of misery and mystery. As with a hermit in a far-off wooded cabin, we want to believe in a mythical past. We want to believe that the folk tales are true. We know that we will never find out what really goes on in his world.
So it may not be that he is unlikable but, rather, that he is unknown.
Okay, okay, but the point is that Belichick cheats. His bend-don’t-break defense also applies to the rulebook. With a wave of his hand, his army of spies scours the country, and maybe even the globe, blending in to the background and picking up top-secret information.
The truth is that Belichick has been caught cheating only once. In what erupted into Spygate and is now the genesis of urban legend, New England was punished by the league in 2007 for filming the Jets’ play calls from a video camera on the field. It was certainly against the rules and it certainly was dumb, since the NFL had recently sent a memo to all teams discouraging taping games from the sidelines.
Against the rules, but not unheard of. A week after the fallout, former Cowboys coach Jimmie Johnson said, “This is exactly how I was told to do it 18 years ago by a Kansas City Chiefs scout…I know for a fact there were various teams doing this.” In 2006, the Jets were actually one of those teams.
From all of this the Patriots have emerged as a public target, so that any whiff of foul play, no matter how small, common or unproven, turns into something more sinister. The wheels of imagination begin to churn, and suddenly New England’s success makes sense.
According to an ESPN story, after their Super Bowl loss to the Patriots, many Philadelphia Eagles wondered, “How did New England seem completely prepared for the rarely used dime defense the Eagles deployed in the second quarter, scoring touchdowns on three of four drives?” Maybe the Patriots did their homework. Maybe the coaching staff did some extra digging in film study and outsmarted Philadelphia. Is that so unreasonable to think?
Yet many on the team, and many in Philadelphia, came to the conclusion that New England filmed the Eagles’ practices or stole their playbook. At some point, this turns from legitimate accusations into lame excuses.
That 19 teams have accused New England of foul play may in fact be the reason why the team’s scandalous reputation has grown—it is easy to point fingers when others will gladly point along. And Belichick plays the bad guy with the hooded brilliance that makes us desperately believe there is more than hard work behind his success. This reputation is in everyone’s heads, such that reason is replaced by speculation. No matter what Bill Belichick and the Patriots do to disprove them, it is probable that the stories will never stop.
New England’s most recent victory in Buffalo 40-32 suggests that this summer saga has not stalled their success.•
