I’m stunned that the NFL allows a review on 12-men-on-the-field. Why not a review looking for holding? Or PI?
If the Giants hadn’t mounted their last minute drive, the game would’ve ended as the lowest scoring Super Bowl ever (or at least in the bottom 2…can’t be bothered to look it up), and the highlight, game-winning TD would’ve been a 5 yard pass where the defender fell down. Yawn.
And weighing in on the controversies…Bellichick’s a dick for his last-second behavior. Stand on the sidelines and take it like a man – watch the kneel-down and the clock tick down, then go shake hands. Just like every opponent did for you.
But as to TapeGate…as they say in card games, if you hold your cards where I can see 'em, it ain’t peeking.
Videotaping from the sidelines does not involve photographing anything that can’t already be seen with the naked eye. The camera is not being snuck over anyone’s shoulder. It’s perfectly legal to look across the field without a camera, so in the poker analogy, it’s like videotaping cards that they’re already showing you anyway.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a challenge on ‘12 men on the field’, for what it’s worth. It’s not even the first time I’ve seen that challenged this season.
You’re only like the 50th person to ask that. I don’t know why he did it. I guess he was just lazy and arrogant and thought he could get away with it. What I do know is that it does not confer any competitive advantage. He was only videotaping things which everybody could plainly see anyway and which was legal to tape from other locations. So you tell me what advantage he could have possibly obtained.
I imagine it has to do with being able to zoom in and get information you wouldn’t have had from the stands. Obviously the league thought that it did, or they wouldn’t have made it against the rules. I’m not sure by what legal loophole I, as someone who’s not involved in sports to any degree, should need it to explain to you, another someone who’s not involved in sports to any degree, for it to be “cheating.” If it pisses you off that much, write a letter to the commissioner.
This is wrong. The clock stops on out-of-bounds and stays stopped until the next snap throughout the game. If an official judges that the runner’s momentum was stopped in the field of play and was driven backwards out of bounds, the clock keeps running.
I believe teams are allowed to tape each other from on the field and from within their own coaching boxes. I’m not really sure why it’s against the rules to tape from somewhere else, and it could be an “NFL owns all game footage” thing instead of a competitive thing. If videotaping from some places is legal, I’m not exactly why it’s not legal other ways.
The intent to cheat seems to be there. Did it help them? Who knows. If it’s true they taped the Rams’ walkthrough before their first Super Bowl win, that’s a bigger deal. And for right now, that’s totally unconfirmed.
You videotape the signals in the first half because it gives you a far better record of them to analyze and decode at halftime, as compared to doing it from notes (which is legal). Decoding the signals gives you a competitive advantage in the second half. This is why “everybody does it,” or tries to, as best they can under the rules. Unless they ignore those rules – in which case they are cheating. To gain a competitive advantage. It’s not that complicated.
I’d compare it to steroids. You can train all you want to add size and strength. You can hire trainers, specialists, dieticians. You can even try to enhance performance medically during games, with painkillers and by administering IV to offset dehydration. You can do all kinds of things, but the league decided (rightly or wrongly) to draw the line somewhere, in this case at steroids and various other substances. That’s the line. Cross it, get caught on steroids, and you’ve cheated. Pay the price, just like the Patriots did. Because they were cheating. And no whining about how it isn’t really cheating to use steroids because gosh, everybody’s so strong out there that it didn’t really provide an advantage.
With signal-stealing, the league decided to draw the line at videotaping. There was no ambiguity about what is allowed and what’s not. Use binoculars, use a notepad. Hire a troupe of interpretive dancers to re-enact the signals in your locker room at halftime. Enlist a team of MIT professors or CIA codebreakers if you like, but don’t use videotape. Because that’s cheating.
I wouldn’t have had a problem if 12 guys participated in the play, and the review demonstrated that. I just didn’t like that the question hinged on whether some part of one player was over the sideline or not in his attempt to clear the field at the start of the snap. He was clearly not a factor in the play one way or the other.
But you CAN videotape from other locations, just not the sidelines, and to adress Cricetus’ speculation as to being able to zoom in for tighter shots, I’m pretty sure you can zoom in just as easily from a coaching box. 100% of th information which can be gotten from sideline taping can also be (and is) gathered by other means.
I’m not sure why this is novel or controversial to anyone, because the rule change has been around several years now, but you are incorrect, as far as the issue of the clock. The clock does not stop for out of bounds plays one way or the other (except for getting the ball ready for play) until the last two minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the second. (You are correct that the ref will determine whether a tackle was in-bounds or not.)
Don’t believe me? Just ask the ref (Jerry Markbreit)!