Patriots SPYGATE was much worse than let on...OTL report

The 10-6 record without Brady certainly helps make the case that Brady's not as indispensable as I think, but Belichick being garbage in Cleveland and in his first year in NE without Brady makes the opposite case: people wanted Belichick out until he hit on Brady.

I think Belichick is a great X's and O's coach even without cheating. With cheating he's become even harder to beat. But I do think Brady is an elite QB in terms of skill. Again, Brady's accomplishments must have an asterisk next to them, but that's a separate story.

 

They were 11-5.

And what are you basing Belichick being a good X's & O's guy without cheating on? For all any of us know, he's been cheating since day 1.

 

11-5 sorry..

It's certainly possible he's been cheating since day 1. Let's suppose that's true. I just have a hard time believing all the relatively good in-game adjustments Belichick is known for (or has made) are due to cheating. It's easier for me to believe that a game plan (made before the game) was modified due to info they obtained through shadowy means, but many of his good in-game adjustments? Tough for me to believe.

Anyway, all this is just based on intuition. Like I said in that post above, I don't think we can resolve this through data, unless totally new revelations come out.

 

Unfortunately he looked 28 last thursday

 

Its hard for me to believe he didn't cheat his way through.

It just literally doesn't make sense to think he didn't, imo. He was a horrible HC who somehow became great because a 6th round nobody magically became one of the greatest of all time? That on its own is not enough but highly suspicious, but when you mix in that we know for a fact they have cheated multiple times in multiple ways, it makes it pretty hard to not believe it. I mean does it really make sense to think that those were the only ways they cheated?

 

I'm willing to entertain other ways. But what kind of cheating would allow him to make good in-game adjustments? I'm talking about adjusting strategy based on what you see on the field (like if your initial strategy is proving not to work.. what do you do?). The only thing I can see is that they could listen in on all conversations of the opposing coaches and adjust their game plan based on adjustments made by the other side.

It's technically possible, but I need to see evidence of that before believing it. Until then, I'll give him credit for being good at X's and O's, at least for in-game adjustments.

 

I guess that's my thing, why give them credit? What have they done to deserve your faith in them? They've literally lied, cheated and stolen. What about their history makes you go, 'Yeah, I believe them.", especially for a person who seems to care so much about cold facts, as yourself?

 

I'm not sure how much the cheating helped, I'm sure it helped to a point, but stealing signals was being done by half the league, Mangini is not widely liked around the league for "spilling the beans", beans that he himself used, making him a hypocrite, and deflated balls when they're home since 2006-7? because prior to that no one touched the balls, brand new out of the box balls were used, not sure how much of an advantage that is, and it won't help your ability to perform in big spots, that's still up to the player, or coach.

These are techniques to gain an edge, deflated balls do not guarantee victory, all they are getting is an edge, and they have the talent to take advantage of it, there's nothing wrong with admitting your opponents abilities, even if they are cheating.

 

I'm not going on any statements they've made (and I'm with you that there's no reason to believe their statements), so for me it's two things I'm looking at: 1) I assume they WANT to cheat (we agree on that), and 2) how difficult is it to cheat?

It's the second question that's the difference between in-game adjustments vs. Spygate etc.. I just think it's so much harder for them to pull off the kind of cheating necessary to make the kinds of good in-game adjustments Belichick is known for. I have NO doubt they want to cheat, but I don't think they can in this case.

 

Riddle me this, why risk all of it, if it these things give a minor boost? Also, why are we to believe that's all they did? Is it their forthcoming about the other times they've cheated?

So yes, defend the Pats. They've lied. They've cheated. They've stolen. But as far you're concerned...no big deal they're awesome. lol.

 

They made the headphones for another team go in and out based on how close the ref was to the Pats' sideline. How big of a jump is it from that to listening in?

 

Did all teams have a secret office full of all the illegally gotten tape, with it all broken down plays diagrammed, etc? They started running no huddle, KNOWING what the defense was calling in. But yeah, Brady is so clutch, and BB is a great Xs and Os coach. No question, they are both tainted. You have no way of knowing how much the cheating helped...but a bad coach and a 6th round QB became the greatest of all time.

What does that tell you.

Oh yeah, surprise, Finster is defending the Pats. Just like elsewhere.

 

Well.. jamming or cutting off power (to equipment you provide as the home team) is fairly easy. Actually listening in on a conversation is another story, especially given that Telex (the company that provides the headsets) has encryption on their microphones. This is a whole different level of sophistication we're talking about that you'd need to have, and depending on the type of encryption, no one may be able to decode that.

 

That was predictable, but thanks, I just made 5 bucks on that predicable response.

I bet my brother that you or resnor would end your response with me liking the Pats.

He said there was no way after that completely reasonable comment I made, I said, wanna bet? lol

Thanks for not disappointing!!

 

If you have the frequency, you can do whatever the hell you'd like on the channel... Not that they EVER would of course.

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If it's encrypted, you have to decrypt it to listen in on what's being said. If they're using something like Public Key Encryption with a true random number generator as the basis, not even the NSA can decrypt that (to be precise.. they could but it would take too long--like 10,000 years or so). So no, the frequency is not at all sufficient.

 

Mike Shanahan said there are 10-15 teams that were known to cheat. He's hired professionals to sweep locker rooms for bugs. The Patriots took it the furthest, and probably kept going even when the NFL told them to stop.

[video=youtube;nX0_k8DTUZE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX0_k8DTUZE[/video]

Charlie Casserly who was on the competition committee said there were teams who put an illegal mic on the nose tackle to record the QB's audibles, match it up the game tape, and used it the next time they met. Another team used an extra parabolic mic on the field pointed right at the QB to do the same thing. None of these examples are known, because the NFL will sweep most cheating under the rug. And he said this not while defending the Patriots (Spygate had not happened yet) but defending the Dolphins in 2006 when they bought tapes

http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/sports_football_dolphins/2006/12/stealing_signs_.html

Guaranteed the other team that cheats a lot is the Jets. They're just incompetent and they suck. So you don't hear about it. But they tampered with kicking balls before. They filmed the Patriots. The jets absolutely cheat. I have no doubts. But hey, Jets. They haven't won anything. Yes, the Patriots cheat. They cheat the most. They keep cheating even after the NFL tells them to stop. Their cheating lets them take advantage of dumb teams like the Dolphins who were too primitive to change their signals.

Bad coach? Hardly. He took a 3-13 team to 11-5, the playoffs and won a playoff game in year 4. Was he HOF? No. But he wasn't bad or terrible. In year 5, they were 4-4 and the team announced the move to Baltimore, and they go 1-7 after.

 

They weren't cutting out the power, they were messing with the frequency.

http://deadspin.com/what-exactly-happened-with-the-steelers-headsets-1730005682?utm_expid=66866090-52.r5txldOmRkqnbJxnyozIeA.0&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fdeadspin.com%2F

Again, it takes faith to believe they weren't doing more based on their history but that same history says they shouldn't have faith put in them.

Listening in, may be complicated, but it is possible and there's no reason to think the Pats didn't do it. Hell, it may not even be all that complicated on a technical level, they could have directional mics or bugs or stadium people listening on the sidelines.

 

lol yeah.

I'm not basing it off your one comment. I'm basing it off that the majority of your comments over the past month or two that have been either ****ting on Tannehill or blowing the Pats.

You are crapping on the up and coming QB of the team you supposedly are fan of (after almost 2 decades of not having a QB we can say that about) and rigorously defending a team in our division who regularly cheats and has for a decade, which in all that time, has kept us from making the playoffs at various times.

And its not even all that, its really the manner with which you do it. Since you refuse to have an honest debate about anything and douche up the place like you are doing in the Tannehill thread.

So, when one factors up the totality of your two arguments and the attitude with which make your arguments, the conclusion isn't all that hard to make.

I mean, you know who else ****s on Tannehill and vigorously defends the Pats? Pats fans.

Walks like a duck, talks like a duck......

 

How much did the cheating contribute to them even GETTING to those "big spots?" That's the problem. Home-field advantage in the playoffs is a pretty big thing, when the difference between that and going on the road is a game or two tops, ya...

Former Cheatriots players/coaches are on record talking about how much it helped their team, yet some disregard it 'cuz "Brady!"

In a league where only a few plays make the difference in who wins/loses, it is huge. They didn't need to cheat 100% of the plays, they're a good team anyway, but the cheating put them on another level...and that level is a farce.

Are they better than everybody else at it? Probably, even with getting caught several times, there's no telling exactly how much other crap they've pulled. That's not a point of praise, by the way.

 

Very true. If they're implementing the encryption, then all you would be able to do is jam the frequency or pump any other sound in there, not listen in on the encrypted gibberish. That encryption is a game changer from the eavesdropping perspective. Hadn't considered that.

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That's not an answer.

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The everyone else did it dodge. You're better than that j.

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Or you eff with the frequency so they have to speak louder without headsets and now you can pick up what they're saying with directional mics.

 

That's in the realm of possibility. The other way would require a receiver supporting the encryption algorithm, and to get a hold of at least one end's public key.

 

That's called jamming and I addressed that. As pointed out, listening in is another ballgame because Telex uses encryption on their microphones, so no I don't think they've done that: it's not easy to do unless you have help from the company, the NFL or hire far more sophisticated help. There you need evidence (very clear evidence instead of allegations) they did that before believing it.

As far as directional mics are concerned, we're talking about doing this in a football stadium with massive crowd noise, so you'd have to have them real close to the action and they or the people holding them are likely to stand out (directional mics don't work well with large amounts of background noise.. try using one at street level in NYC.. all you'll get is traffic and "white/pink" noise, relative to what you want to hear). It would be hard for others not to notice and is something that requires evidence they are doing it - desire to cheat isn't enough.

So again, for in-game adjustments the default assumption should be they aren't cheating because it's hard to get away with, which is why I have to give Belichick credit for being good at X's and O's.

 

It seems pretty obvious that stealing signals was a big part of the Pats' success over these many years. They have been incredibly successful and the one area they may actually have been superior to everybody else is cheating.

 

I'm not talking about Spygate. I'm talking about being able to hear what's being communicated in the headsets. For that, they're innocent until proven guilty because of the difficulty of the task.

And it's also important to put Spygate in some context here. Even Bill Cowher (after their loss to the Patriots) pointed out everyone steals opponents' signals, or at least tries to. The Patriots just went further and videotaped them. According to him, the taping wasn't the reason for the loss. So yes, the Patriots had some advantage, and I'm sure contributed to their SB wins (like I said, their accomplishments now have unofficial asterisks next to them), but the difference isn't one team fully knowing the opponent's signals while the other team had no clue.

 

I said you were defending them...which you are. Just like you do at phinfever.

 

Who's dodging? He asked a question if other teams had rooms full of film. I answered it. I also said the Pats cheated more, harder and better than anyone. Because they know the NFL will sweep it under the rug. I cited the Casserly to prove it. Who is the team that placed the mic on their nose tackle. Do you know? I don't. They obviously we're not punished for if.

Casserly said that while defending Tje dolphins saying they were not cheating and teams out there were doing much worse. Again that was to show, the NFL will sweep cheating under the rug. Bill knows that and is exploiting it.

 

The "it wasn't that bad" dodge. C'mon now cbrad.

 

What did I say that you disagree with? Read it carefully and I bet you won't disagree with it. All I'm saying is one shouldn't make it out to be the Patriots knew opponents' signals while the opponent knew nothing of the Patriots' signals.

 

It gave them an edge, no doubt, they should be punished, cheating is cheating, some people call it gamesmanship, like when Shula soaked the outer edges of the field when they played the Raiders to stop their speedy outside WRs, or Pittsburgh doing the same thing and it turned to ice, that's cheating, but they would call it gamesmanship.

Holding is cheating, grabbing a WR so he can't run is cheating, picks(the play) are cheating, yet the player who do this well are respected, no one was better at offensive pass interference than Irving, it's cheating, circumventing the rules to gain an advantage.

This sport has a rich history of cheating, Dolphins included, I am not so blinded that I will act like a girl who got felt up at the prom because another team was caught deflating footballs, there isn't even any concrete proof that it gives an advantage, it seems to be more of a QB preference, as other QBs have come out and said they prefer them overinflated.

The real affront here is doing it the way they did it, as far as I'm concerned every team should be allowed to put the pressure where they like it.

I didn't praise them, I said recognize their abilities.

 

I don't necessarily care about the deflation crap...its all the other stuff they've been caught doing (and all the stuff, no doubt, they get away with) that really pisses me off.

You can call it what you want...and if you're going to try and make a holding call equal to a 2nd speaker in a helmet...seriously?

Pathetic.

 

Rosetta Stone, so you can learn how to read, where did I say all cheating is equal?

Pathetic.

 

Don't bother. He's just sniping anyone who appears to be defending the Patriots.

 

The deflating footballs issue is something I actually do care about, and statistical evidence shows it helped the Patriots quite a lot. In fact, it's easier from a statistical point of view to estimate how much it helped the Patriots than Spygate.

I laid out a more detailed analysis in a previous thread, so I'm only going to list the key points of the argument here: 1) since 2007 the Patriots showed a massive decrease in fumbling rate relative to the rest of the league (only team to have such a statistical anomaly), and 2) when you look at a graph of win/loss record vs. fumbles across teams, you see that the decrease in fumbling rate per season (since 2007) for the Patriots corresponds to about 1 extra win per year.

That's only a statistical argument and doesn't explain the "mechanism" behind what occurred, but 1 extra win per season is a big deal.

 

Thanks Professor McDouchenozzle.

 

I respect what your saying, and there is some good data there to start to make a scientific outlay, but scientific studies would still have to be made to determine what the pros and cons are of under inflated footballs, because there are undoubtably cons as well.

However, the Pats already had won 3 SBs prior to 2007, and only 1 since, 3-0 prior to 2007 and 1-2 since 2007, so we can't attach under inflated footballs to those SB rings.

 

There could be other factors of course, but you'd have to identify them first and then show data allowing us to estimate the effect on a game/season. The only data I can find that shows a serious effect of deflating footballs to wins is through the fumbling stats. If you can find another argument and data to support it I'm interested.