For Those Lacking Perspective, Bill Belichick And Osama Bin Laden Are Not The Same Person

Here are some thoughts on the Patriots sideline spying story that’s been the talk of the town in NFL circles this week. First and foremost, it’s not that big a deal, and the whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. What was done is not the story - who did it is the story. If Ken Whisenhunt and the Cardinals had been caught taping defensive signals on the sidelines, no one would have cared. But because it’s the Patriots, those NFL poster boys, it’s news.

They played dirty, but guess what, sports fans? - that ain’t news. They fake injuries to steal timeouts they don’t have the right to. But that’s also not a big deal. Peyton Manning likes to count how many defenders are on the field, and if he catches the other team with twelve guys, he’ll call a quick play to force a penalty. That’s not the same as taping calls on the sideline or faking an injury, but there’s a degree of shady there.

The next thing someone is going to say is that they broke a rule. The only problem with that is that some people see broken rules and then automatically go into black and white penalty mode, without bothering to consider perspective. What about if the guy had been back there without a camera? Is that against the rules, too? Is it against the rules for some guy to sit on the sideline and do nothing else but watch the coach on the other sideline, and then make notes about what he sees? Sure, he may not get as much information in such a permanent way as the guy with the camera - at least not right away. But the guy watching from across the field can spend the whole game doing it without fear of being found out. The guy with the camera has to be careful and covert, and won’t see as much as the guy across the field. At some point the two balance out and the benefit gained is probably a push, or bloody close to it. It’s not necessarily a silly rule - but there’s a real fine line between breaking it, bending it, and not doing anything “wrong” at all.

Plus, it doesn’t matter how many signals you steal from the other team. You could have their whole damn playbook. Your team still has to get the job done on the field. Some of what I have been reading just now about the Patriots and their signal-stealing refers to the fact that sometimes they seem to run a lot of screen plays out of nowhere - theoretically as a result of knowing that a certain defensive scheme is coming. If you’re going to throw a screen because you anticipate a blitz, then you’re going to get rid of the ball as soon as possible - immediately after the snap, or maybe with a one step drop. That screen pass is going to be nearly horizontal across the field, and the receiver will be planning to turn upfield and run with the ball after the catch. In a pressure situation like that, there is always the possibility of a bad snap, especially when the quarterback knows he’s going to have to get rid of the ball quickly. An even more likely scenario is that the receiver will turn upfield before he fully catches the ball, resulting in a drop.

And the screen isn’t a high-impact play most of the time anyway. It’s an escape, as in the previous example, or it’s a last resort, if the quarterback goes through his checks and can’t find a receiver (and in this case the pass usually goes to the tailback). That kind of fishing for an out can help a bad team, but it’s just gravy for the Patriots. For most of the teams in this league, it won’t matter if the Patriots know your signals or not - they’re going to beat you anyway.

But maybe it is a big deal. Maybe signal stealing is really what made the difference for the Patriots. Maybe this is a much more insidious thing than anybody realizes, something that needs to be stopped immediately, and punished in such a harsh way that no one will ever think of doing it again.

If that’s the case, then you need a punishment that will really make people think twice about it. Here’s the punishment - you suspend the head coach for two games, and the team he was caught cheating against gets to pick the two games. Bonus - those two games can be ANY two games, regular season or post-season, including the Super Bowl. The suspensions won’t be announced until game day, so there’s no way to prepare for it.

Here’s another reason it’s not a big deal - and more support for the idea that, regardless of what kind of illicit information you happen to come by, your team still has to go out and make plays. Don’t forget that the ascension of the Patriots had two key components. Belichick arrived as head coach in 2000, at the end of the Drew Bledsoe era in New England - a season in which the Patriots won five games.

Then along came Tom Brady, who inherited Bledsoe’s job early in the 2001 season. Belichick is in his twelfth year as a head coach - half of those with Brady as his starting quarterback in New England. In the six Brady-Belichick years, New England has won 70 regular season games. That means that in the other six years Belichick was a head coach, he won 41 games. That’s a 73% winning percentage with Brady as his quarterback and a 43% winning percentage with someone else as his quarterback. To suggest that Belichick's behavior - however bad it might have been - is the key element in New England's success since 2001 is simply folly. Take Brady out of the equation and I think you have a huge drop-off in the quality of this team. Remove Belichick and there is still a drop - but not nearly as much of one.

Sure, you’d like to see an organization as classy as New England get it done without cheating - and perhaps as a Colts fan I'm just used to seeing personal integrity (other than that of Dominic Rhodes) held up to just as much scrutiny as the win-loss record (of course, the Colts haven't been caught at it yet); but the bottom line is that this is a red herring. You could go ahead and change the rule book to allow sideline taping of signals - and I don’t suspect that much would change. The Patriots/Colts/Bears would still win way more games than they would lose - and vice versa for the Lions/Cardinals/Texans. It’s a non-story - or at least it should be.

By the way...New England hosts San Diego this week. That's a potential AFC title game preview, between two of the three teams that have a legitimate shot at playing in that game (the other team, of course, is the Colts). I'm sure the whole spying thing going down one week had nothing to do with the San Diego game the following week. But hey...what do I know? I thought Greg Oden was going to be the NBA Rookie of the Year this year, too.

(Here's an interesting opinion in support of Belichick, from MSNBC's Steve Silverman. ESPN's John Clayton, however, thinks the punishment was too light.)