by Ian O'Connor
Sources and documents in the ESPN story indicated that at least 40 games were illegally videotaped by the Patriots, dating back to 2000—making the operation far more extensive than Goodell had admitted—and that the seized Spygate notes included detailed diagrams of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defensive signals from the January 2002 AFC Championship Game. It appeared Goodell had covered for his most successful franchise and one of his most ardent backers, Kraft, and other NFL owners let the commissioner know he had no choice but to even the score.
“People weren’t happy with what Roger said about destroying the tapes and notes,” one owner said. “His reasoning for doing it didn’t make any sense. Of course the other franchises had a right to know the full extent of the cheating, and what was taken from them. But Roger knew that would be a great embarrassment to the league and the most successful team in it, and he wanted to minimize the damage. That was his priority, and I don’t know if any owner or executive in the league was happy about it.”
The Patriots responded to the ESPN story with a direct hit on the sports and entertainment giant, reminding fans and readers that the network had needed to apologize to the team for twice crediting the old Boston Herald report that falsely claimed the Patriots had taped the Rams’ Super Bowl walk-through. “This type of reporting over the past seven years has led to additional unfounded, unwarranted, and quite frankly, unbelievable allegations by former players, coaches and executives,” read the Patriots’ statement. “None of which have ever been substantiated, but many of which continue to be propagated. The New England Patriots are led by an owner whose well-documented efforts on league wide initiatives—from TV contracts to preventing a work stoppage—have earned him the reputation as one of the best in the NFL. For the past 16 years, the Patriots have been led by one of the league’s all-time greatest coaches and one of its all-time greatest quarterbacks. It is disappointing that some choose to believe in myths, conjecture and rumors rather than giving credit for the team’s successes to Coach Belichick, his staff and the players for their hard work, attention to detail, methodical weekly preparation, diligence and overall performance.”
The Deflategate victim total kept piling up, and yet, almost miraculously, the one significant figure in the case who escaped relatively unscathed was none other than Bill Belichick. As much as Spygate didn’t stick to Brady, Deflategate wasn’t sticking to the head coach. The Wells Report might as well have been called the Brady Report. Belichick was cleared of any wrongdoing (as was Kraft), and many of the same people who thought the coach was lying when he swore he had merely misinterpreted a rule in Spygate found him to be believable this time around.
And as it turned out, there was one side benefit to Belichick that tempered the pain of losing a first-round pick: He would get to coach the first four games of the 2016 season without Brady under center. Belichick had long told associates he wanted a shot at winning a Super Bowl with another quarterback, and he was falling hard for the one he’d drafted in 2014, Jimmy Garoppolo, a good kid and a great-looking young player. One Patriots staffer said that people in the building believed in recent years that Belichick was asking himself, Is Brady really going to have to be my quarterback until I retire? Though he understood Brady’s greatness better than anyone, Belichick yearned for a fresh challenge. The Deflategate suspension gave him a small window of opportunity to flex his coaching muscle in an entirely different way.
But before he got his opportunity with Garoppolo to start the 2016 season, Belichick opened the 2015 season with Brady on a distressing note. After New England’s 28–21 home victory over Pittsburgh in the rain-soaked season opener (during which fans mocked the absent Goodell with chants of “Where is Roger?”), Steelers coach Mike Tomlin revealed that his team’s headsets had been malfunctioning during the game. “That’s always the case,” Tomlin said of games he’d coached at Gillette Stadium. “We were listening to the Patriots’ radio broadcast for the majority of the first half. On our headsets.” Tomlin was listening to color man and former Patriots backup quarterback Scott Zolak, and he said the Steelers couldn’t communicate coach to coach. Told he was indicating something very serious—that the Patriots were cheating again—Tomlin said, “I’m not indicating nothing. I’m telling you what happened.”
Tomlin and his team were doing a better job than any journalist of advancing the ESPN story from two days earlier. The Steelers posted an article on their website accusing the Patriots of defying league protocol regarding malfunctioning headsets.
“This is the kind of stuff that happens to the visiting team in Gillette Stadium all the time,” read the Steelers.com story. “From the start of the game through the opening 14 minutes of the first quarter, the Steelers coaches’ headsets were receiving the Patriots Radio Network broadcast of the game. The broadcast was so loud that the Steelers coaches were unable to communicate, and the NFL rule is that if one team’s headsets are not working the other team is supposed to be forced to take their headsets off. It’s what the NFL calls the Equity Rule. Strangely enough, whenever an NFL representative proceeded to the New England sideline to shut down their headsets, the Steelers’ headsets cleared. Then as the representative walked away from the New England sideline, the Steelers’ headsets again started to receive the Patriots game broadcast.”
Belichick had hit his breaking point. He’d had enough of the spoken and written claims of deflated footballs, jammed headset frequencies, pilfered play sheets, you name it. Hall of Famer Don Shula, the Miami Dolphins’ legend, had taken to calling him “Beli-cheat,” a shot clearly below the belt. Sports Illustrated had published a report of its own detailing the extreme methods teams used to protect their practices and locker rooms from real or imagined Patriot spies, including clearing out trash cans that might otherwise be searched for discarded intel and transporting their own sports drinks to Gillette Stadium so their hosts couldn’t ensure the drinks were warm and/or late in arriving. On top of it all, Tomlin’s sour grapes left a bitter taste in the winning coach’s mouth. In a conference call with reporters the next morning, Belichick spoke of the common communication problems New England confronted in its stadium before firing off shots at Tomlin and other vanquished foes who had complained about alleged improprieties. He was clearly waiting for an opportunity to vent.
“I just think overall it’s kind of sad, really, to see some stories written that obviously have an agenda to them with misinformation and anonymous-type comments and writing about warm drinks and trash cans and stuff like that,” Belichick said. “I think it’s just sad commentary and it’s gone to a pretty low level. It’s sunk pretty deep.
“First of all, let’s say that I think our program here is built on competition and trying to improve every day and trying to work hard, and it’s not built on excuses. We just try to go to work and improve and find a way to get better. This organization has won a lot of games, but particularly in reference to the great teams from ’01, ’03, ’04, and back in there, all the great players that played on those teams . . . To take away from what those guys accomplished, what those teams accomplished, how good they were, how many great players we had, how well they played in big games, how they consistently showed up and made big plays and game-winning plays—it’s just not right.”
Belichick had punched back by accusing Tomlin of being an excuse maker and sent a message to the rest of the league that future accusations would be met with forceful reminders of New England’s long-running dominance. The NFL actually came to Belichick’s aid by announcing that the problems in the Pittsburgh game had resulted from a “stadium power infrastructure issue, which was exacerbated by the inclement weather.” League spokesman Michael Signora said that the coaches’ headsets were provided by the NFL as part of standard operating procedure, and that once the stadium power issue was addressed, the Steelers (and Patriots) had no additional problems with their communication equipment.
On the subject of rule-bending and rule-breaking in pro football, everything seemed to
circle back to Foxborough. It seemed the Patriots were involved even when they weren’t involved. An example: Following a 2010 game against Miami, a New York Jets strength coach, Sal Alosi, was suspended and fined for tripping a Dolphins gunner on punt coverage as part of a human wall of Jets that Alosi had set up close to the sideline. The Patriots weren’t even playing in this AFC East game, and yet they were dragged into the controversy when Mike Westhoff, the Jets’ special teams coach, told ESPN 1000, in Chicago, that New England had been guilty of similar tactics—remarks that contributed to the NFL’s decision to fine the Jets $100,000.
Westhoff swore that he had no knowledge of what Alosi was doing on the sideline, but he maintained that he’d watched tape of New England that showed Patriots players lining up on the sideline when they were returning punts. “New England had it organized—look at any film,” Westhoff said. “It was like the [Texas] A&M marching band, and we had four idiots in sweatpants doing it.”
Westhoff shared his concerns with NFL officials during the Alosi investigation, and the next time he saw Scott O’Brien, New England’s highly regarded special teams coach, O’Brien let Westhoff know he was upset about it. “Scott said, ‘I’ve been coaching more than 20 years and I never once did this, and I got my ass reamed by my owner,’” Westhoff recalled. “I said, ‘I apologize to you, Scott, but it’s still the New England Patriots who did this. So fuck you guys.’ They did it for years.”
Truth was, many other NFL franchises had been punished for breaking league rules involving illegal practices, tampering, injury-report violations, salary-cap violations, and creating artificial stadium noise when the visiting team had the ball. So some veteran players, coaches, and executives did not necessarily see the Patriots as rogue outliers. Michael Huyghue, an agent who had been an executive with the Detroit Lions and Jacksonville Jaguars, was among those who believed that Brady knew that staffers were deflating footballs for his benefit, but he compared the misdemeanor to someone stealing a cherry while shopping in the fruits section of a supermarket.
“Technically you’re not supposed to do that, but who cares?” Huyghue said. “I don’t think Bill Belichick knew about it. Could Brady have gone to the equipment guys and done this on his own? Yeah. It’s the kind of thing Belichick could’ve known about, but didn’t know about. If you have a 15-year-old son and you go through his drawers, you might find something you don’t want to find, so you tell him what the right thing to do is, but you’re not going through his stuff.
“The nature of this game,” Huyghue continued, “is to get every advantage you can . . . Bill’s nature is to turn over every rock, and that’s led him sometimes to turn over some rocks he shouldn’t have turned over. He’s just a machine that gobbles information. He’s drawn to figuring out your weaknesses. I don’t believe he’s a guy who sets out and says, ‘Let’s cheat. Let’s go and see if we can get a copy of your playbook.’ He wants to say he can beat you and let you know he beat you, but he doesn’t want to gimmick-beat you. He wants to outprepare you and beat you. It’s the same way guys use bankruptcy laws to save you financially, and use loopholes in the tax code to maximize income. That’s what Bill does.”
Huyghue pointed out that NFL teams are forever signing players off upcoming opponents’ practice squads for the express purpose of learning those opponents’ calls and audibles. A senior vice president of the Jaguars’ football operations from 1994 through 2001, Huyghue also estimated that during that period, five to seven NFL teams were illegally videotaping opponents before games on any given Sunday. “Back in the day,” Huyghue said, “when teams came in on Friday or Saturday and did a walk-through in the stadium, the home teams were required to leave the venue. But teams would routinely stand up in the back of sky boxes and watch or film the walk-throughs. It’s prohibited, and they did it.”
To many, the perpetual hunt for an edge was an ingrained part of NFL culture hardly confined to New England. Tim Green, a former first-round draft pick and an eight-year linebacker and defensive end in Atlanta, called rules-bending “inherent” in the game. “It almost feels like law school to me,” said Green, a lawyer, author, and broadcaster, “where you start going down that rabbit hole. When is it bending the rules and when is it breaking the rules? Who makes that judgment call? Even Deflategate: Was that breaking the rules or bending the rules? People who get on their soapbox and thump their Bibles on that, I think it’s hypocritical.
“I played against offensive linemen that put silicone on their jerseys and didn’t get caught, and linemen who held me intentionally and didn’t get caught. Before they had a flinch rule on the goal line, I would flinch when the crowd noise was crazy to try to draw that offensive lineman offsides . . . Was I cheating or taking advantage of the situation? I bet you Bill Belichick would say ‘Hey, that’s smart. You’re using your surroundings. You’re like the American military fighting the British. You’re using your environment and getting any edge you can have.’”
As a Fox analyst, Green had only limited access to Belichick; he worked a couple of Patriots games and sat in the usual briefings Belichick and other NFL head coaches had with network announcing crews. But Green came away from those briefings with the strong impression that Belichick’s Naval Academy upbringing had shaped his approach to competition. “I wouldn’t be surprised, if you could get him to go under hypnosis, that he sees himself as a general,” Green said, “and that football is merely a variation of a campaign of war . . . Unquestioned obedience is imperative. Hierarchy is imperative, and by outworking, outplanning, and outthinking your opponents, you can win. And I really don’t mean this in a disparaging way, but I believe that espionage is also a part of that. It’s all theoretical speculation, but my read of him was that to take someone’s plays, to take their signals, and to spy on them—I would think on a psychological level, for him, that’s not only all right, but it’s appropriate and the right way to do things.”
In the end, New England’s alleged actions in Deflategate represented a high football crime to some, and another day at the office to others. The first NFL quarterback Belichick worked with, Baltimore’s Bert Jones, said he always manipulated game balls by asking the officials to rub them down with hot, wet towels to remove the balls’ sheen and to create higher, more defined seams. Decades later, Arizona’s Jeff Blake claimed that every NFL team used pins to bleed air out of footballs before kickoff. Blake said he couldn’t understand why Deflategate had become such a big deal. “It’s not something that’s not been done for 20 years,” he said.
The Patriots couldn’t believe that this had become a major national story, and their quarterback couldn’t believe that his good name had been soiled. Did Brady do it? Did he conspire with the two staffers, Jastremski and McNally, to create a small ball that would be easier to grip and rip? Or did a league office full of suits who were eager to hammer the Patriots and who hadn’t given the Ideal Gas Law a second thought since junior high lose sight of a reasonable explanation for deflated balls on a cool New England night?
Exponent, the scientific consulting firm hired by the NFL, conducted tests that in its view demonstrated that the Ideal Gas Law couldn’t fully account for the drop in PSI in New England’s footballs. The Patriots countered with a parade of experts who poked a million holes in Exponent’s findings. One search for the truth led to Timothy Gay, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Nebraska. Gay had authored a book, The Physics of Football, and it happened to include a foreword from his Andover schoolmate Bill Belichick. The book was published a decade before Deflategate, but it included a breakdown of how the Ideal Gas Law relates to football.
Gay had been the football team manager at Andover when Belichick and Ernie Adams played on the offensive line. When his book came out, he wrote them an email about it, and one of the two responded by saying that both were too busy to read it. “I said, ‘If you read this book, you’ll get an extra three points every six years,’” Gay recalled, “and they said, ‘Yes, we’d wa
nt to read that.’”
As a physicist and football junkie with a distant connection to the Patriots’ coaching staff, Gay followed Deflategate very closely. He initially told reporters that he believed the Ideal Gas Law could explain the drop in the footballs’ air pressure. But his opinion was later altered by the timeline described in the Wells Report. Gay focused on the estimate by Wells’s firm (Paul, Weiss) that the testing of New England’s footballs at halftime of the AFC Championship Game had started after the balls began to warm up and therefore should’ve produced higher PSI numbers than were reported that night. The report states that testing began “no sooner than 2 minutes after the balls were brought into the locker room and was estimated to have taken approximately 4 to 5 minutes (leading to an ending time of between 6 and 7 minutes, and thus, an average measurement time of between 4 and 4.5 minutes, assuming a start time of 2 minutes) . . . Given the likely timing of the testing, one would expect the average halftime pressure measured for the Patriots footballs on Game Day to be higher than what was actually recorded.”
The way Gay saw it, if the reported timeline was correct, the Ideal Gas Law couldn’t explain the inflation levels of New England’s footballs. “Because the balls had time to warm up and reinflate,” he said. “That’s the best evidence I’ve seen that something fishy happened and someone cheated, and the circumstantial evidence points to two guys in the equipment room, two flunkies.”
Gay had watched his old schoolmate’s My Cousin Vinny press conference, and he reviewed all the data from experiments that concluded the Patriots were blameless in the whole mess. But the physicist kept coming back to the timeline. “I don’t think Bill or Tom cheated,” Gay said. “The ball boys took it on themselves.
