Specter / 'Spygate' hyperbole of 'cheating'

"Only On The Web: The New England Patriots spy-gate scandal rocked the NFL. Now, for the first time, coach Bill Belichick counters allegations made by a former videotaper in an exclusive interview with Armen Keteyian."
full transcript | full video (14:40)

Keteyian: "Bill, overall, what is your reaction to Matt Walsh's comments?"
Belichick: "Well, I'm not really sure where to start. I think first of all go back to when he was here and was fired for, first, poor job performance and then for secretly audiotaping a conversation with his boss. You know, more than one person has told me that he said after Super Bowl XXXVI that he had videotaped the Rams' walkthrough practice. Now that story has changed. It seems like he has an agenda, I'm not really sure. I don't know."
Keteyian: "To bring down this franchise?"
Belichick: "You know, three and a half months after that story was out he could have said what he said last week, but there was quite a bit of…over a hundred days had passed. So I'm not sure what the agenda is."
Keteyian: "His motivation?"
Belichick: "He's had a way of embellishing stories, and that continues to be the case. So I don't know the answer to those questions."
Keteyian: "What is your personal feeling about Matt Walsh right now?"
Belichick: "That things seem to be shifting, things seem to be embellished. You know, he's made some comments relative to me that I don't know how or why he would come up with those. We didn't really have much of a relationship at all when he was here. He was on the opposite end of the building on a different floor; we very rarely saw or talked to each other. For him to represent how I felt or what I thought or what I did, I don't know where that would possibly come from. The fact that he was trying to make it seem like we were buddies and belonged to the same book club all that is really a long, long stretch."
Keteyian: "In a statement, this organization questioned 'the truthfulness of many of Matt Walsh's statements.' What do you think he's lying about?"
Belichick: "Well, he's changed a lot of things that he said. Whatever his testimony was to the league most recently, that's kind of the latest version of it."
Keteyian: "But a specific example of what you think he's lying about. When he talks about how this organization was deceptive in the way that his taping was set up, for example?"
Belichick: "That was never the case. No, that was never the case. He was in full Patriots gear. I could show you videos of him doing his job during the game, shooting the shot that he shot from the end zone – the kickers, the tight on the quarterback and, at times, signals – and there was no, we weren't trying to be discreet about it. Again, in all honesty we felt like what we were doing was okay."
Keteyian: "Walsh said it was arrogant of you to say that you had just misinterpreted NFL rules and that you said that this illegal taping was of little value – one on a scale of a hundred – and that his feeling was it may well be the reason that you won three Super Bowls."
Belichick: "Well, first of all, I'll start at the back first. The reason you win football games is because of players. Players make plays on the field to win games and that's how you win them. They're the ones that win games. But there's a lot of things that go into a preparation for a game. It's a mosaic – there are hundreds of things – and in our case sometimes signals are involved, sometimes they're not."
Keteyian: "But let me go back to the specific thing that Walsh said. He said that it was arrogant of you to say that you had misinterpreted NFL rules."
Belichick: "Well, my interpretation of the rules came from the Constitution & Bylaws. In I think it's paragraph 14 in there, the Constitution & Bylaws states very clearly that you cannot use any type of videotaping device or anything like that from the start of the game to the conclusion of the game. And that was never done. We never, ever used any of the videotaping in any way during the course of any game. And that's what I felt like I was in compliance with and that's my basis for really everything that we've done in terms of competing in the National Football League."
Keteyian: "I actually have a copy of those Constitution & Bylaws. It's article 9, 14b, 14, and it ends with 'during the playing of a game.' So that's what you based your defense upon, is that what you were doing, that taping, was legal under NFL bylaws and constitution as long as you were not using it during the playing of a game."
Belichick: "It was never used during the playing of a game. Never. Now, subsequently there was a memo that Ray Anderson sent out at the beginning of the 2006 season, and that was an error on my part. I take full accountability for that. At that point I feel like I should have gone to the league – I made a mistake, I should have gone to the league and said 'Look, are we okay doing this even though we're not using it within the game?' And I didn't do that, we continued to do what we had done previously – at times, it wasn't every game, but it was a significant number – and did it based on the constitution and feeling like as long as we weren't using it during the game that it was okay."
Keteyian: "When you say a significant number, from September of '06 to when you were finally caught in September of '07, how many games?"
Belichick: "Oh, I don't know but probably more than half, I would say."
Keteyian: "That September 2006 memo states, 'Videotaping of any kind, including but not limited to taping of an opponent's offensive or defensive signals, is prohibited on the sidelines, in the coaches' booth, in the locker room, or at any other locations accessible to club members during the game.' That seems pretty crystal clear, Bill, for any kind of misinterpretation."
Belichick: "Yeah well, again, during the game."
Keteyian: "It says 'during the game,' but it does not say during the playing of a game. Different."
Belichick: "Right. Well, clearly it was a mistake."
Keteyian: "And some people would say that mistake was just flat-out cheating."
Belichick: "Well, again, I go back to the Constitution & Bylaws. That overrode it and I interpreted it incorrectly, so I was wrong. And we were penalized for it."
Keteyian: "Heavily penalized. In your mind, unfairly penalized? In your mind."
Belichick: It doesn't really make any difference. It wasn't my penalty, it was the commissioner's decision. So whatever it was, that's what it was."
Keteyian: "When we're talking about that, some of the argument is that others have argued that you chose to gamble, risk breaking the rules, and got caught, and it wasn't a misinterpretation of any kind."
Belichick: "I can't control what other people think out there. I'm telling you what happened and that's what happened. I think if that was our intent then we would have done it in a more discreet way. We were open about it. We had instances where opposing coaches actually turned and waved to the camera. They saw it. There were other teams that we felt like were doing it. Again, look, in preparation for a game, the signals that a coach gives out there everybody can see. We've had coaches in the pressbox take notes of those signals, we've videotaped them. It wasn't anything that wasn't visible or wasn't available. We did it in a way that was more convenient and a way that we could study a little bit better. But those signals are available to anybody that wants to see them."
Keteyian: "Can I go back to Matt Walsh and his departure? Do you feel in any way what he is saying now is payback for being fired by this organization?"
Belichick: "You'd have to talk to him about that. I don't know what his motivations are."
Keteyian: "Well, you have to have an opinion."
Belichick: "Again, I had very little contact with Matt. I didn't know him personally. As I said, I don't know if I could recognize him and I don't think I could have prior to his recent publicity. What his agenda is, what his reasons are and so forth, that's something you would have to ask him."
Keteyian: "Can you clarify what happened with those tapes once they went to Ernie [Adams]?"
Belichick: "Yeah, absolutely. He looked at them and it was, again, a mosaic; it was put in together with a lot of other information about what the team did and our preparation for the game. But I met with the quarterbacks twice a week. When Charlie [Weis] was the offensive coordinator, when Josh [McDaniels] was the offensive coordinator, [Tom] Brady, there were not quarterback-Ernie Adams-Bill Belichick-offensive coordinator meetings where we sat down and looked at signals and made up game-plans based on that. That didn't happen. That did not happen."
Keteyian: "So there was no scheme."
Belichick: "It didn't happen. Ernie looked at them and at times there was some information that came out of it and he used it, but that's really how it was done. It was one part of a very broad, hundreds of things that are put into preparation and game-planning. But there was no, 'Okay, we're going to sit down here on this day and have this meeting, and there's the signals and here's the plays that we're going to run and all that. That never happened."
Keteyian: "So there was no calculated, deliberate system that was put into place to take advantage of this illegal taping?"
Belichick: "No, because you can't take advantage of signals. You don't know whether they're ever going to be available or not – they can change them, they can use wristbands, they can have somebody stand in front of the person that's signaling them. We signal all the time [and] we're always protective of our signals. We change them on a regular basis and we have people screen the signal-caller and we use wristbands and we do things like that to protect them, just like a third base coach does. I think most teams in the league do that."
Keteyian: "Some might argue in a game of inches, putting that kind of information – where you could decode signals, come up with specific plays to use in real time in a game – is pure gold in the NFL. That could be the difference between winning and losing."
Belichick: "Well again, you can get those same signals by sitting up in the pressbox and writing down what the signal is and what the play was and doing it that way. Those signals are available to anybody who wants to see them."
Keteyian: "Then why do it from the sidelines?"
Belichick: "It was a more convenient way to study them, that's all. But it isn't any information that isn't available to anybody else. Anybody could sit up in the pressbox and watch a coach give signals."
Keteyian: "But they don't have them on tape, where they could go back and analyze them and they can decode them. Writing them down on a piece of paper…"
Belichick: "We're not talking about DNA. You've seen the signals on the sideline. You could sit there and watch them. We've done it. We've done it without tape. Every team takes an advance scout or they have people that look at the other teams' signals. Sometimes you can get them, sometimes they change them, I mean that's just…signaling defenses and personnel and all that, that's part of football. And everybody is available to see those signals. It's not like the other team or the other sideline or the pressbox or anybody else, that they're not visible. They're visible to 70,000 fans."
Keteyian: "If they weren't of such great value to you and this organization then why would Matt Walsh say that he was told by his superiors to avoid detection, to not wear Patriots clothing on the sidelines and to lie if he was asked about what he was shooting?"
Belichick: "Well, I don't know of anybody that would have told him that. I never told anybody to tell him that, I don't think his superiors told him to do that."
Keteyian: "You don't think or you don't know whether Jimmy Dee, his superior, told him that?"
Belichick: "He was never instructed to do that and Jimmy said that he never did that. But you can see the tapes of Matt filming the games, you can see him in the end zone camera shooting them – he's as open as you can be! He's standing there behind the camera in full Patriots gear shooting the tapes. Those tapes go to every team in the league. So you can make your judgment on that, Armen. You can see him standing there in the end zone shooting it. It's not anything discreet."
Keteyian: "Since I'm here, is there anything else that you'd like to say about this to put this to rest, so to speak?"
Belichick: "Yeah, two things. I think that the players and the assistant coaches have really no involvement in this whatsoever, and for them to be dragged in or questioned at all on it is totally out of the scope and the realm of what this is about. I think our players and our assistant coaches work hard, they prepare hard and they go out and do their best to win, and that's why I respect them and that's why they've done as well as they have. But on a going forward basis, I think that what we've taken from this as an organization is that we have learned from the problems that we had in the fall, we've looked at really every single area of our operation, we've tried to tighten down, we've tightened down our accountability, we've streamlined some things, we are certainly taking the extra step in every situation that we can to make sure that we're in full, complete compliance with everything that we have to do at every level, and believe me, there are a lot of things that we need to be – I mean, there's a very broad spectrum of things that you need to be in compliance with in the National Football League. Commissioner Goodell has instituted kind of an integrity and a [reporting requirement] of doing it. We've gone, I think, well beyond that to try to make sure that we're doing things in the right way and I think that's been a positive step for our organization because we're now…there's more communication, there's better understanding, and we're making sure that everything's done in a totally proper and consistent way with what the league expects it to be done in. So I think that has strengthened our organization, and certainly Robert and Jonathan Kraft have gone a long way to not only be supportive of me and the football team but also making sure that going forward that we're in complete compliance with everything that we need to be doing."