FanHouse MattWalsh

After ESPN's day-long coverage of Matt Walsh's Spygate revelations last month, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady criticized the Worldwide Leader for spending an inordinate amount of time on the issue -- an opinion that Brady arrived at without having watched ESPN's coverage.

But now someone who did watch that coverage is weighing in with a similar opinion to Brady's. Le Anne Schreiber, ESPN's ombudsman, writes today that the network went overboard in covering the Spygate story, and she especially singles out NFL analysts Cris Carter and Mark Schlereth:

Schlereth imagined how such tapes might affect the outcome if film was shot, edited and utilized "during the course of a game" ...

"To think that a Super Bowl might be slanted in a team's favor!" Carter fumed.

Schreiber is right that Carter and Schlereth wrongly suggested that Walsh's tapes were used during games. In reality, the tapes were used between games. But for the most part, what I've found from fans is that those who like the Patriots think ESPN and the rest of the media have been too hard on them, while those who dislike the Patriots think ESPN and the rest of the media have been too easy on them.

Former Patriots offensive lineman Ross Tucker believes that coach Bill Belichick abused IR rules by allowing injured players to practice. By league rule, players on Injured Reserve cannot practice with the team.

Tucker talked with ESPN's NFL Live yesterday about what he wrote at SI.com last week.

Basically, the Patriots would put a player on IR, knowing it meant he couldn't play in a game or practice with the team for the remainder of the season. By skirting the rules and practicing him anyway, it allowed them to develop his skills during the year. A side benefit is that they were also able to give some of the older players less repetitions and, therefore, additional rest.

This item also came up during Matt Walsh's little chat last week with Roger Goodell.

Tucker (who played for five teams during his career) wrote that he asked Pats receiver Troy Brown about allowing IR players to practice -- to which he was told "everyone does it". Tucker contends that none of the other teams he'd play for (Redskins, Cowboys, Browns, Bills) ever let an IR player practice with the team during the season.

However, Tucker does say that he never saw or heard about any video tapes made by the team. Obviously there were tapes out there, but this goes back to the question of how those tapes were used by the organization.

Yesterday I mentioned that Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis, formerly of the New England Patriots, isn't interested in discussing Spygate. Even though he benefited from the team's illegal taping practices if you believe Matt Walsh.

Today, on Dan Patrick's radio show, Hall of Fame quarterback and ESPN football analyst Steve Young shared his newly evolving thoughts on Weis:

"I remember thinking to myself during some of the runs, 'Charlie Weis is a genius,'" Young said. "I mean, I remember saying that to people: 'This guy is uncanny, how he's able to make these adjustments and just come out and dominate in the second half.' What it's left me to do is, well, I don't know. Did it matter? I could see how it could matter if you put it all together. So it's a tough one. I think that people earn it on the field, and I think you've got to move on and move forward and just recognize that it's not a good thing at the time."

As Michael David Smith writes on PFT, Young admitted that if an offense knew what play the defense was running, "The game would be over. If I knew what was coming, that's the whole game." He then added, "Of course, [Sean] Salisbury could have the defense scream the play across the line of scrimmage to him and he'd still throw three or four picks a game; for everybody else, though, it's a huge advantage."*

Charlie Weis was the New England Patriots offensive coordinator from 2000-2004 before taking the Notre Dame head coaching gig. His five years in Foxboro put him right in the middle of the scandal that refuses to die: Spygate.

And according to the unfailingly credible Matt Walsh, Weis not only knew of the team's illegal taping practices, but benefited from them. In an interview with the New York Times, Walsh cited a 2000 game against the Buccaneers as an example:

"I asked one of our quarterbacks if the information that I provided was beneficial in any way," Walsh told the Times. "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.' "

In the HBO interview, Walsh said this unnamed quarterback learned the Buccaneers' defensive signals from the exhibition tapes, then read them and relayed them to Weis during the regular-season game.

The Chicago Tribune's Brian Hamilton wonders how complicit Weis was in Bill Belichick's nefarious plot for world domination, but wisely, Weis ain't talking.

As FanHouse's Ryan Wilson noted, the transcript of the CBS News interview with New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick was written in ALL CAPS, as if Belichick had shouted his answers. As it turns out, the video shows more sneering than shouting:

Belichick had a look of contempt on his face as he described Matt Walsh, the former Patriots video assistant who has been the central figure of the Spygate story of the last three months. But he did admit that he screwed up.

"I made a mistake," Belichick said. "It was wrong. I was wrong."

The Boston Globe's Mike Reiss got his hands on part of the transcript of Bill Belichick's interview with CBS Evening News, and he kindly posted it on his blog. Here's what Belichick told interviewer Armen Keteyian when asked about Matt Walsh:

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT HIS AGENDA IS, AGAIN, HE WAS FIRED FOR POOR JOB PERFORMANCE AND FOR AUDIO TAPING HIS SUPERIOR. THERE'S NOT A LOT OF CREDIBILITY. YOU KNOW HE'S TRIED TO MAKE IT SEEM LIKE WE'RE BUDDIES, AND BELONG TO THE SAME BOOK CLUB AND ALL. THAT'S REALLY A LONG, LONG STRETCH."

"FOR HIM TO TALK ABOUT GAME PLANNING AND STATEGY [sic] AND PLAY CALLING AND HOW HE ADVISED COORDINATORS, IT'S EMBARRASING [sic], IT'S ABSURD. HE DIDN'T HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE OF FOOTBALL. HE WAS OUR THIRD VIDEO ASSISTANT.'

(I'm not sure if CBS distributes all transcripts in all caps, or if Belichick was yelling. I'm going with the latter, but it's probably worth watching the telecast for verification.)

I can't really blame Belichick for sounding angry -- he's had his good name sullied these past few months -- but I do think it's a bit much to start questioning other people's credibility since, you know, Roger Goodell did fine him $500,000 for cheating.

To Belichick's credit, when questioned about videotaping signals after the NFL's 2006 memo, he offered this response: "I made a mistake. I was wrong. I was wrong." Now all that's left if for senator Arlen Specter to hold a press conference to make sure we don't forget that he's busy attending to the people's business. And by "people" I mean "Comcast", of course.

Other than Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter's quest for the truth, most everybody else is done with Spygate. Even Mike Martz, the recipient of the Super Bowl XXXVI beatdown, courtesy of the then-upstart New England Patriots.

Today Martz released a statement through his current employer, the San Francisco 49ers, and offered this:

"I had the opportunity to talk to Commissioner [Roger] Goodell yesterday and I was very satisfied with the NFL's efforts to investigate the situation with Matt Walsh as it related to Super Bowl XXXVI. I'm very confident that there was no impropriety. I believed Bill Belichick when he said there wasn't and I took that at face value."

Martz added, perhaps to emphasize his point to certain single-minded individuals, that the Rams lost to the Patriots because they "turned the ball over three times." So that's that -- or at least it should be if not for that meddling busybody, Specter.

And while Martz is ready to move on from Spygate, he had some very pointed remarks for Walsh:

It's been well established that senator Arlen Specter had ulterior motives for pursuing the NFL and the whole (not really) sordid Spygate saga: money. Specifically, helping the senator's biggest contributor, Comcast, get their greedy little mitts on a piece of the NFL Sunday Ticket pie.

Now that Matt Walsh has finally spilled the beans, Specter is calling for a Mitchell report-like investigation of the Patriots under the guise of doing the people's business. Problem is, nobody can find these "people" outside of Comcast headquarters. So while the rest of us are ready to get on with our lives, Specter continues his crusade against ... well, something.

Which, apparently, is enough to move Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy into action.

"With the war in Iraq raging on, gasoline prices closing in on $4 a gallon, and Americans losing their homes at record rates to foreclosure, the United States Senate should be focusing on the real problems that Americans are struggling with," Kennedy said through a spokesman in response to a question posed by a Globe reporter. "I'm looking forward to another great Patriots season where they can let their play on the field speak for itself."

Save that last sentence, Kennedy's views echo those of just about every other rational person who has commented on the alleged scandal in the last three months.

This doesn't take away from the fact that the Patriots were caught cheating, and that Bill Belichick might've misled Goodell. And while Goodell certainly has reasons for wanting Spygate to go away (for the children, of course), I'm pretty sure we don't need the U.S. Congress to help sort things out. Even if they had absolutely nothing else to do.

Roger Goodell's meeting with Matt Walsh yesterday and the revelation that no tape existed of a pre-Super Bowl XXXVI walkthrough were hailed as the final nails in the coffin of Spygate. They shouldn't start heaping dirt on the grace just yet, though, because the NFL's still scheduling interviews into the matter.

Brian Daboll, quarterback coach for the Jets and former Patriots assistant, will head into league offices for a second meeting. Walsh, after admitting he watched the walkthrough while wearing Patriots garb and setting up equipment, said Daboll grilled him about the plays and formations employed by the Rams.

Walsh told Daboll he noticed that star running back Marshall Faulk was returning kickoffs, league attorney Gregg Levy said. (Faulk did, in fact, return one kickoff in the game.) Daboll also asked Walsh about the Rams' offensive formations, particularly the role of the tight end, according to Levy, who said the Walsh-Daboll conversation lasted less than 10 minutes.

There's something that just isn't adding up here. If, as Goodell said yesterday, nothing untoward happened in the Superdome, why continue to pursue the matter?

Goodell's comments indicate that he believes Walsh was telling the truth, hence no need for further sanctions, so what information are they looking for from Daboll? The biggest questions to answer now, it would seem, are why the Rams let a guy wearing Patriot duds watch their practice and, assuming they noticed, why they would run plays that were anything but decoys?

Well, hold the phone. At NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's press conference following his meeting with ex-Patriots employee Matt Walsh, Goodell said there would be no new sanctions against the Patriots because "there was no Rams walk-through tape."

But afterward, ESPN's Sal Paolantonio reported that although Walsh didn't tape the Rams' walk-through, he attended it, watched what the Rams did and reported back to the team's coaching staff about what he saw.

Specifically, according to Paolantonio, Walsh told Brian Daboll, a Patriots assistant coach, about the way the Rams planned to align their tight end against the Patriots' defense, and that the Rams lined up in a kick return formation in which Marshall Faulk took the field.

If Paolantonio's report is accurate, Goodell should have mentioned it at his press conference -- and you can bet Senator Arlen Specter will mention it later today. As far as Goodell is concerned, this issue is over, but Paolantonio's report is just the kind of information Specter needs to keep Spygate alive.