Don’t buy that the Patriots cheated to try to beat 1-11 team

I’m all in favor of controversy, conspiracy theories and espionage intrigue, but to believe there is any way the Patriots were videotaping the Bengals’ sideline signals Sunday in Cleveland to gain the edge for a trip to Cincinnati requires such suspension of reality that it stretches well beyond paranoia.

Only a wildly insane mind could believe that the smartest coach in the history of football would be dumb enough to risk it all by spying on a 1-11 football team that the Patriots could beat if they invited the entire Bengals coaching staff, cameras in tow, to watch every snap of practice and every coaches’ meeting.

The NFL has the SD card from the camera being operated on Sunday by a Kraft Productions videographer who was at the game to shoot footage of an advance scout for a show called, “Do Your Job,” which takes viewers behind the scenes for a glimpse of what various people who work in football do.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that a Bengals scout noticed a Patriots video crew filming the Bengals’ sideline and alerted Bengals executives, who notified NFL security, which confiscated the camera’s SDC (Secure Digital Card).

Patriots coach Bill Belichick was brought up to speed on the reports before making his weekly appearance on WEEI.

“As I understand it they were videotaping him trying to show you know, kind of what an advance scout does or something like that,” Belichick said. “I don’t know. You have to wait and see the show I guess, and see how it’s presented.”

Unless the videographer went rogue and taped the sidelines so that he could show his buddies or so that he could try to become a hero by stealing the signs of the worst team in football for the coaching staff without its knowledge, it’s difficult to imagine the card will show anything that will do anything but get the Patriots off the hook.

No way the Patriots would send anybody anywhere with a camera without that person being drilled on what he or she is or is not allowed to do.

“From a football standpoint, look, we absolutely know what the rules are and we are 100 percent in compliance, to the best of my knowledge, with every single rule that we’re responsible for,” Belichick said. “What another part of the organization does or doesn’t do as part of their, whether it’s game presentation or TV shows or stuff like that, I mean I have no idea what that is.”

It used to be easy to divide the press box into areas where objective media worked and members of the coaching staff worked. Now, in the age of teams paying people to “cover” them, the blurry line throws everyone in one fish tank playing by different rules. Now that teams, and in college sports representatives of the athletic department, have encroached on the media’s space, mixups such as the one the Patriots are mired in at the moment are inevitable.

The Patriots’ Spygate history understandably can lead to paranoia from opponents, but if SDC shows nothing of interest, the Bengals will regret not doing a better job of vetting the situation before getting the league involved.

Why poke the bear?

Bengals coach Zac Taylor said at his Monday press conference that he was aware of “the incident” but declined to comment on it.

That set off a prayer chain across the country of football fans wanting to believe that a day after the Patriots were denied by shoddy officiating a shot to compete in overtime in a 23-16 loss to the Chiefs, the Patriots were caught trying to get away with their old tricks.

I’ll sleep soundly tonight in the belief that the Patriots did not set out to steal the signals of a 1-11 football team. More likely: The Bengals flattered themselves by thinking that the defending Super Bowl champions think so highly of them they believe they have to cheat to beat them.

Unless the contents of the SDC are way different from what appearances suggest, Fakegate is likely to fade from memory soon.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2sUeWYz