jose melendez said:
I will say, if they were actually going into locker rooms and stealing play sheets, that's pretty fucked, but to be clear, they have literally no evidence as best I can tell.
Oil Can Dan said:
Having been in an NFL locker room on gameday morning up until game time I can say that there is no way to go into a locker room and steal a play sheet. That's absolutely ridiculous.
Like someone else posted further up, I just don't get worked up about this crap anymore. It's dumb. But the above two posts pretty much spell out an easy way to counter any people who cry "Cheatriots." And that's this:
If the Patriots have cheated so often, for so long, against so many different teams, then how is it that nobody ever finds any evidence that they have actually cheated? Either they are some of the greatest master criminals of all time and are wasting their talents on the game of football when they should be, like, robbing banks or something. Or these are all urban legends that just won't die because the Patriots keep on winning. I'm an Ockham's Razor guy in most situations, so I'll go with the latter. Some want to say "Where there is smoke, there's probably fire," but if they've been systematically cheating in a myriad of different ways for 15 or so years, you'd think someone would have found some concrete evidence of such activities. If the best things you can find are, "They were videotaping from an unapproved location," and, "They might be using balls that are intentionally underinflated by a slight amount," I can't really take any of your accusations seriously.
I think there's an interesting story to be told here about the different cliques and factions within the NFL, the power struggles between them, and how Goodell is caught in the middle while trying to please everyone (and generally failing to please anyone because he's largely incompetent). But that's not really the story this article tried to tell, nor will that be how the Hot Takez sports machines spin it. It's all going to be about the Patriots, and how they cheat and get away with it. And don't think for a second that ESPN and the two authors failed to recognize that.
It's misguided to think the NFL was behind this. Kenny is right: it's simply clickbait for ESPN. Reporting facts is for suckers. Nowadays, you simply invent the story that you know people want to hear/read, then twist the facts to fit that narrative. Welcome to modern day "journalism."