The SpyGate and DeflateGate scandals just took a turn for the worse in the cases of the New England Patriots, NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell.
According to a thoroughly put together investigative report by ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham, the NFL and New England Patriots were in cohorts to cover up a much more damning SpyGate investigation a few years ago.
What you didn’t hear about in the original investigation included:
- Bill Belichick and the Patriots videotaped opposing teams’ signals from 40 different games between 2000 and 2007.
- Belichick pretty much had his own department within the Patriots to head spying on other teams which he put in the hands of Ernie Adams and the official job title of ‘director of football research’.
- Adams’ constructed a secret library of video on other teams.
- This footage contained within the library would coincide with spreadsheets of all signals and plays an advanced Patriots scout would hand over to Adams.
- To obtain the footage, Patriots employees would disguise themselves as media members and be instructed to tape over the logos on their shirt or turn their sweatshirts inside out. They would also told to carry bogus TV credentials that read ‘Patriots TV’ and/or ‘Kraft Productions’ along with a line of excuses saying they were filming certain players for a Patriots television show.
- The Patriots would also send low ranking employees into visiting locker rooms to steal the opposing team’s play sheets which even carried over to the visiting team’s hotels.
Here’s an excerpt from the ESPN report:
In fact, many former New England coaches and employees insist that the taping of signals wasn’t even the most effective cheating method the Patriots deployed in that era. Several of them acknowledge that during pregame warm-ups, a low-level Patriots employee would sneak into the visiting locker room and steal the play sheet, listing the first 20 or so scripted calls for the opposing team’s offense. (The practice became so notorious that some coaches put out fake play sheets for the Patriots to swipe.) Numerous former employees say the Patriots would have someone rummage through the visiting team hotel for playbooks or scouting reports.
So where does the cover up come in? After the NFL and the New York Jets set up a sting to catch a Patriots employee named Matt Estrella secretly video taping and using all of the same punch lines listed above the league took action to protect one of their biggest assets, the New England Patriots. Not to mention the relationship between Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Roger Goodell since it’s widely believed that Goodell got his job as the League’s commissioner after plenty of support from one of the NFL’s most powerful owners. Because of this the NFL wanted nothing more than to make SpyGate essentially blow over and go away.
Here’s what Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham uncovered.
- After the Estrella incident in 2006, Goodell spoke with Belichick over the phone and ‘did not believe’ the coach nor the Patriots’ explanation regarding the taping. Goodell didn’t press for any further information from the Patriots and ‘didn’t want to know how many games were taped’.
- The NFL sent three executives including general counsel Jeff Pash to Foxborough to destroy eight videotapes of opposing teams and a stack of documents. In fact the detail here were the documents were shredded and the tapes were physically stomped on.
- In order to get the whole SpyGate thing to blow over, coaches and executives from the Steelers and Eagles sent out public statements saying they were satisfied with the NFL’s investigation pertaining to the Patriots. The Steelers and Eagles are significant in this case considering the Patriots played the Steelers in the 2002 AFC Championship Game (which Pittsburgh lost and contended they were spied on) and the Eagles in the 2005 Super Bowl. Deadspin says that they couldn’t confirm whether or not the NFL pressured Pittsburgh or Philadelphia to put out statements professing their satisfaction.
- Former Rams coach Mike Martz however came out saying he was urged by Roger Goodell to follow suit with the Steelers and Eagles when it came to the 2002 Super Bowl. Martz said that Goodell told him that the ‘league doesn’t need this’ and that the NFL was asking him to come out with ‘a couple of lines exonerating us saying we did our due diligence’.
- After he released a statement Martz said it was doctored by the NFL.
- And with the NFL and the league’s owners on the same page a congressional investigation was ultimately avoided.
New England and the NFL’s cover up eventually led to the hammer being brought down on Tom Brady during penalty phase of DeflateGate. This resulted in a four-game suspension on top of other fines to appease owners who were sick of the Patriots’ success and special treatment being given by Goodell. This would certainly make sense given Robert Kraft’s initial support of the punishments handed down by Goodell and the suspected idea that his old pal would eventually come to an agreement with him regarding the Brady suspension.
Everything eventually blew up in Goodell’s face with Kraft withdrawing his support for the NFL commissioner and Brady essentially embarrassing Goodell and the rest of the NFL in court after a judge threw out his four-game suspension.
Many though do believe the extent of the DeflateGate investigation and subsequent suspension of Brady was just a ‘make up call’ for the NFL by Goodell. Of course all completely unethical.
The Patriots in the meantime have denied any wrongdoing.
Here is the statement the #Patriots issued in response to today's ESPN report. Strong stuff pic.twitter.com/NPAAAmcz2M
— Ben Volin (@BenVolin) September 8, 2015
Good for ESPN though. Apparently they do have a backbone when it comes to the NFL.