There is some serious gamesmanship being perpetrated by the New England Patriots. In my opinion, the Patriots seem to be saying to the NFL brass, the NFL fans and the rest of the world that: “since you accuse us of cheating covertly, we will cheat overtly and there is nothing that you can do about it because we are the Patriots and you’re not.”
Anytime that a team is able to get away, day after day, season after season and year after year with skirting the rules and throwing their middle finger up at the rest of the world without any serious or meaningful penalties or consequences, well something is wrong; very, very wrong.
The Pittsburgh Steelers and many football fans became suspicious of another event that more than likely gave the Patriots an unfair competitive advantage, again.
During the “Kick Off” game of the NFL season on September 10, 2015 between the New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers played at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA., the headsets of the Steelers that the NFL sanctions for coaches to communicate with their players were compromised by an “unknown” source and there may be a distinct possibility that the equipment was purposely tampered with.
An article posted nbcsports.com on September 11, 2015 by Michael David Smith; “At least five teams have suspected Patriots of headset tampering,” seems to suggest that the equipment failure of the Pittsburgh Steelers headsets may not have been a random occurrence.
Smith’s article brings to light that: “in 2005 former Jacksonville Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio said the headsets “mysteriously malfunctioned.” In 2006, ex- Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Mike Martz suspected the Patriots of preventing him from communicating with his quarterback. As reported by Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated, Martz had Detroit’s offense off to a good start until he lost the ability to call plays because the communications system went out. According to that report, it happened to the Lions twice, both times in the middle of drives when the Lions were picking up steam.”
Let’s be real. When a person, place or thing continues to display the same characteristics repeatedly, the participants affected have to demand a change or change themselves. The coaching methods and techniques of the New England Patriots have been mislabeled as pure “genius.”
The real and honest definition of the Patriots so-called “dynasty” is pure thuggery, skullduggery, lawlessness and a total disregard of NFL and professional football codes of ethics and the etiquette of competition.
As far as the “boys’ from “Beantown” being exposed for their sins, just remember they would have the world believe that their transgressions are everyone’s fault but their own or while simultaneously attempting to convince the world that they simply did nothing wrong in the first place. To add insult to injury the Patriots from the top down not only want to win, they wish is to destroy the spirit and psyches of every franchise that they compete against, mirroring an almost dark and occult-like, bloodletting ceremony, in lieu of a football contest.
Hit rewind for a moment. After “spygate” exposed the Patriots tainted Super Bowl victories, Tom Brady said that he wanted to “kill” the opposition. I have always been under the impression that the object of competing in a football game was to simply “just win baby,” not kill, maim or destroy the opponent.
Remember we no longer feed the gladiators to the lions. There are players just as there are fans that are thoroughly convinced that the Patriots cheated to win specific Super Bowls especially Hall-of-Fame running back Marshall Faulk. “Obviously, the commissioner gets to handle things how he wants to handle them but if they wanted us to shut up about what happened, show us the tapes. Don’t burn ’em,” Faulk said to profootballtalk.nbcsports.com talk in January of 2013.
Faulk also said the Rams installed new plays for the game against the Patriots, and that the Patriots seemed to be so perfectly prepared for them that Faulk believes they must have used espionage.” As far as the “genius of “Bill “Belicheat” Belichick is concerned Marshall Faulk seems less inclined to define the Patriots Head Coach as a “genius.” “
I understand Bill is a great coach,” Faulk said. “But No. 13 [Kurt Warner] will tell you. Mike Martz will tell you. We had some plays in the red zone that we hadn’t ran. . . . And a couple of plays on third down that we walked through also . . . And they created a check for it. It’s just little things like that. It’s either the best coaching in the world when you come up with situations that you had never seen before. Or you’d seen it and knew what to do.”
Well we have seen the Patriots cheat and cheat but they don’t seem to care about the consequences of their behavior or let’s just say the lack of consequences. Until they are taken seriously, they will continue to repeat their behavior because remember they really may feel that they did nothing wrong in the first place.
Aubrey Bruce can be reached at: abruce@newpittsburghcourier.com or 415.583.6741
Follow him on Twitter@ultrascribe.com