Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots hired a guy to video tape the Jets’ hand signals during a regular season game to steal the signals for th future. So now, there’s a big fooferow about it with huge fines and the loss of the Pats’ first round draft pick.
This stuff happens all the time in big league baseball - at least they did when I was following the game. This was back before video cameras. A club would send a man to spy on teams just before they would come to their town. He’d sit in the stands in an area where he’d have a good view of the baseline coaches and the dugout.
The point of the exercise was to steal signs - hit and run, steal, sacrifice, etc. So, when that team comes to town the home team would have an advantage.
E.g. The visiting team has men on first and second. The third base coach flashes the hit and run. The home team manager sees this and flashes a pitchout to the catcher who flashes it to the pitcher. The runners go with the pitcher’s motion, the pitcher throws wide of the plate and the catcher nails the runner at third. Routine shit.
All the clubs know this stuff’s going on so they change the signs every so often - or when they think something’s suspicious.
I’ll bet this sign stealing is rampant in the NFL. Bill Belichick just happened to get caught.
BTW, you’ve certainly noticed that many, many NFL coaches put their notes in front of their mouths when they’re talking tactics in a game. They don’t anyone reading their friggin lips!
In this case “the future” is the second half. The Bills could analyze the signals during halftime, and then after the halftime send a message to the QB via radio what defensive scheme he would face for each play.
He was on the sidelines. As to why they did not use your scenario, I have no idea. I could speculate that Belichick is arrogant, and that they have been doing it for a long time without getting caught.
Well, that’s the big deal. It’s the Patriots, and they got caught. I agree with you that it’s probably rampant, and there’s a historical basis for doing it in football and in other sports. Paul Zimmerman had a pretty amusing piece about that on SI.com yesterday. But football fans or, not everybody knows that, and it doesn’t make it alright in either case. Why wouldn’t it be a big deal? Even if it provides little advantage and didn’t help the Pats in that game, it’s still a team trying to get an unfair leg up. I read in the New York Times that the Jets had multiple sets of signals set up to try to prevent New England from reading them. So this kind of thing does place an extra burden on the team being spied on.
Lovely idea, seat a Patriots spy in the middle of 80,000 drunken Jets fans. I’m sure none of them will notice a guy with a big camera (probably wouldn’t be allowed in with it in the first place) relaying Jets signs via cellphone to the opponent, and take out his beer fueled Jets angst on his face, repeatedly. I’d say you’d be lucky to get your spy back with all his limbs functioning, much less get him out unnoticed.
In every sport, there’s a certain amount of gamesmanship that is allowed and inevitable. Also, in every sport, there are limits to that gamesmanship, put in place by the league. In the NFL, videotaping the opponent’s sideline is outside the limits, the Patriots were caught doing it once already, warned, the entire league was reminded this year, and they were caught doing it again in Game 1. Answer, you lose a heap of money and a first round pick. I have a feeling the Pats won’t be doing it again, even though they have another #1 to give up next year.
I have to admit I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, I am certain that signal-stealing is routine around the NFL, and as such the punishment meted out here seems excessive.
On the other hand, it is clearly against the rules, and the Patriots were specifically reminded about the rule, so it’s their own damn fault. I mean, WTF was Belichick thinking!?!? You’re going against your former protege - you don’t think he knows all your tricks? If not for the rules violation, he should have been punished for stupidity
Also, Belichick’s apology that he misinterpreted the rule was, frankly, BS. (And this coming from a longtime Pats fan).
John Madden mentioned the other day that on the offensive side there is one player with a radio receiver in his helmet who gets signals and gives them to the QB. They thought about doing this defensively, but it is not clear that any one player would be in all plays and is special situations like kick returns.
I’ve had water cooler conversations about this at work. The consensus is that the video camera was the bad part. If there was a guy with binoculars and relaying with hand signals, then it would have been legit.
My question is why? Then I get a speech about the “spirit of the game”…
The vote in the recent off season to allow a radio-equipped helmet on defense was narrowly defeated. Most of the teams that voted against it were ones with head coaches with defensive backgrounds, including the Patriots. In light of this cheating scandal, I doubt it will be defeated next year.
The best way to combat technological cheating is to allow teams to use other technology that would render the vulnerability moot. One reason to keep every player from having radio helmets is to force visiting teams to deal with crowd noise.
Imagine what could happen if the quarterback could talk directly to receivers during a play.
As other have said, he was told to stop and kept right on. The second paragraph is the old “others do it” so why can’t I" argument.
Many burglaries are committed without the burglar being caught. Shoud those who do get caught not be punished?
The whole point of a sporting contest is that the issue be decided by the players on the field and their coaches by actually playing the game. We’ve gotten a long way from that in pro, college and even youth sports, but the NFL is apparently trying to stay as close as they can, at least in this regard.
Ive heard this again, and again, and again…is there any evidence, any at all, that “everybody does it,” that this is rampant, that Belichick is the only one who got caught?..anything?
I agree. And I’ll assume, until evidence to the contrary is submitted, that all other head coaches do not conduct activities similar to what Belichick did.
