The New England Patriots will play in their sixth Super Bowl of the Bill Belichick and Tom Brady era on Feb. 1, and the takedown of the franchise’s accomplishments is already off and running.
As the NFL worked to get to the bottom of what may have happened with some possibly underinflated footballs during Sunday’s AFC Championship Game, Sports Illustrated’s Michael Rosenberg wrote a lengthy piece about the dark cloud that cheating accusations have cast over Belichick’s team.
Rosenberg’s feature, which was broken down in detail by Michael Hurley of CBS Boston, dives into all of the stuff we have heard before — stealing opponents signals, videotaping, tricky formations — in addition to some lesser-known gamesmanship tactics he claims the Patriots have used.
Of the many “points” Rosenberg tried to make, the best is his suggestion that the Patriots use a large television in their parking lot to gain an advantage over opponents.
How ingrained is the culture? On one end of Gillette Stadium is a lighthouse, the stadium’s signature architectural feature. But if you sit behind the opposite end zone and look at the lighthouse, you will notice something else: An enormous television beyond the lighthouse, in the parking lot.
Officially, this allows people in the parking lot to watch TV. Is it a coincidence that you can see that TV from the Patriots’ sideline, but not from the opposing sideline, making it easier for the Patriots to watch replays and decide whether to throw the challenge flag?
You know how many coach’s challenges the Patriots have won this season? Zero. Since challenges became a thing in 2000, Belichick has won about 40 percent of them every time he throws the red flag. That’s one of the worst success rates of any head coach in the NFL.
To give you some perspective, Hurley included a photo in his piece that gives an idea of how far the CBS Scene video screen is from the Gillette Stadium sideline.
Wait, what are we even talking about? You know how sometimes you see a controversial play during an NFL game and a roar comes over the crowd a few seconds later? That’s the sound of fans reacting to the replay being shown on the stadium videoboard. You know, the massive one that is conveniently located inside the stadium and shows replays that the home team might want to consider challenging.
Plenty of NFL players have called the Patriots cheaters over the years, and we have examples of that here, here and here. To an extent, they deserve what they get. But some of the things Rosenberg wrote are just plain asinine. None was more absurd than the parking lot videoboard theory.
