I am not a Patriots fan or a hater (Niners fan here, thank you!) but this doesn’t look good…this seems to be a bit more than “hey, all’s fair in love and football” - this seems like out-and-out cheating, but I don’t know what is “normally” done by teams to try to achieve an advantage…
“Wah wah wah, we lost, wah wah wah, we couldn’t cover Randy Moss with three DBs, wah wah wah, the loudest cheer our home crowd gave all game was when our starting QB got injured, wah wah wah.”
That’s what that article reads like to me, anyways.
Unless Belichick (and Bill Parcells) have been doing this since about 1990, I’d say he’s probably still a great coach. But cheating is cheating - and even though I’m not a Pats fan, I almost have to hope they weren’t doing it.