The Patriots Were Pretty Bad At Cheating In The Beginning

Back in September, I did a really short entry on how the Buccaneers were also the victims of the Patriots' cheating, but it didn't matter because the Bucs won anyway. When I wrote it, I thought the Patriots were getting offensive signals and discounted the whole thing because the offensive coordinator at the time, Les Steckel, was fucking awful and predicting what he was going to call is like predicting the ending of an Adam Sandler movie. Then I learned that they were actually taping defensive signals, but had stopped caring by then. Now Matt Walsh sheds some more light on that game:

Q. Did they tell you what their goals were with what you were filming?

A. Nope. They just told me to film the signals, pass the tape along to Ernie Adams. It was ... once I had done it for the first game, and I kind of understood a little bit of the process of how it was going, I actually asked one of our quarterbacks if the information that I provided was beneficial in any way. He said, "Actually, probably about 75 percent of the time, Tampa Bay ran the defense we thought they were going to run. If not more." Because a lot of times, when you're coming out of a timeout, the defense isn't signaled in. It's just told in the huddle. "So that's even discounting those as times we didn't know."

Q. What was the first game you filmed?

A. Tampa Bay, preseason, 2000.

Q. Those signals were then used in the opener?

A. Right. We only lost like 21-16.

In 2000, the Buccaneer defense was nearly unstoppable and the offense was nearly unwatchable. But the Patriots had the advantage over the defense by knowing what they were going to do 75% of the time. So with Shaun King at quarterback, Paul Gruber freshly retired and Jacquez Green as the deep threat for Tampa Bay, the Patriots still lost. How bad was New England? Troy Brown, a wide receiver, was their leading rusher with 33 yards... and they knew when the Bucs would be in a run-defense! Wow.

That year the Patriots went 5-11 and came in last in the AFC East. The next year they won the Super Bowl. The next time someone tells you that those tapes were of no benefit to the Patriots, please kill them with a shovel.