Posted by ESPN.com's Matt Mosley
The New York Times' Web site reported Wednesday night that former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh had sent the league eight tapes that will reveal the club videotaped the play-calling signals of five opponents in six games during the 2000-02 seasons.
As ESPN.com's Mike Fish points out, the major news is that Walsh didn't deliver a tape of a Rams walkthrough practice prior to the 2002 Super Bowl. Walsh's attorney is quick to point out that the former video assistant never suggested that he had a tape of the walkthrough and that he was not the source in the Boston Herald's pre-Super Bowl story indicating the existence of such a tape. But of course Walsh, now a golf pro in Hawaii, didn't seem to mind people speculating that he was the source. Rams president John Shaw told Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times that he wasn't surprised by the absence of the smoking gun.
"We were led to believe that he did not have a tape of us and that was the case," Shaw said Wednesday. "I had spoken to the commissioner . . . and there was absolutely no confirmation of [Walsh] having a tape."
Since commissioner Roger Goodell destroyed the tapes sent in by the Patriots after the Jets turned them in last fall, it will be interesting to see how he handles Walsh's footage. The Times reported that five teams will be featured in Walsh's batch of tapes: the Bills, Dolphins, Browns, Chargers and Steelers. We're now told that the Patriots were filming the Steelers' signals during the 2002 AFC Championship Game.
According to my math, the Patriots went 31-9 against those teams after the film project began in 2000. The Dolphins accounted for six of the nine losses. And that should quickly tell you how poorly the Bills fared.
New England may have filmed as many as 11 different teams' signals. Now, you have to wonder if Goodell will question whether the Patriots turned over all the appropriate evidence in September.
Will the new information lead to further sanctions against Bill Belichick or his team? I highly doubt it. In fact, the NFL began discounting the tapes before they even had a peek at them. "This is consistent with what the Patriots had admitted they had been doing, consistent with what we already knew," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Walsh will have an audience with the commissioner Tuesday morning and then head to Washington for a visit with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who has been Goodell's harshest critic. I think Walsh will enjoy the second interview much more than the first.
The Boston Globe has obtained a copy of the certification document in which Walsh agreed to turn over any information he has related to the Patriots' scandal. According to the Globe, the tapes set to arrive at the league office Thursday include footage of the following games:
- Signals from Dolphins coaches in a game Sept. 24, 2000.
- Offensive and defensive signals of Dolphins coaches from a game Oct. 7, 2001.
- Signals from Bills coaches from a Nov. 11, 2001, game.
- Signals from Browns coaches from a game Dec. 9, 2001.
- Two tapes of signals from Steelers coaches from the 2001 AFC Championship game, held Jan. 27, 2002.
- Signals from Chargers coaches from a game Sept. 29, 2002.
When you include the tapes the Patriots turned over to the league, that's quite a bit of footage. But I doubt the new evidence will cause the commissioner to re-open the investigation. His handling of the first batch of tapes is a blackmark on his otherwise impressive start as NFL commissioner. Once he conducts an interview with Walsh on Tuesday, I think he'll quickly try to close the books on Spygate.
Something tells me, though, that Sen. Specter won't let him off the hook. Expect a respectful news conference in New York on Tuesday during which Goodell will politely say that Walsh didn't drop any bombshells, but did offer some helpful swing tips.
For more on this and other NFL scandals, please continue reading Hashmarks.
Update: Since a couple of you guys thought I had some fuzzy math on my statement about the Patriots going 31-9 against the teams featured in Matt Walsh's eight tapes, let's walk through it together. First of all, one reader was including games against the Jets. Of course, I was only using the Walsh tapes, so the Jets tapes don't apply here.
I have the Patriots going 9-6 against the Dolphins after the taping, 12-1 against the Bills, 3-0 against the Browns, 4-1 against the Steelers and 3-1 against the Chargers. As the New York Times points out, that includes three wins and no losses in the playoffs.
That's how I came up with 31 wins and nine losses. I'll take one more peek at all the records, but I just wanted to explain how I came up with those figures.
Sincerely,
Matt in accounting
