Come on Russ you cant equate Jerry Rice to Fred biletnikoff and Lester Hayes he didn't play in their era he played in an era when it was deemed illegal so to say "everyone" Used it is blatantly false and now you're making excuses for Jerry Rice .
Clearly you're just selective in what cheating you're willing to except and not accept...
I understand different levels of cheating but once again you're talking in era when all teams are cheating to some degree... Just because some didn't get caught doesn't mean it isn't happening in to say otherwise is completely naïve. Either you're against cheating or you're not. You just seem to have a passion for the patriots and what they been done because they were caught. Cheating is cheating regardless of level... Either you should care about all of it and the integrity of the game as a whole... IMO you can't arbitrarily sweep some under the rug and call it "OK" just because you deem "everyone" was doing it...
I have a thing against people that cheat at an unprecedented level. That's why I spent so long complaining about Lance Armstrong who is now claiming he cheated to keep up with all the other cheaters when the facts indicate he escalated cheating to levels they hadn't seen in cycling before.
The Patriots were the dominant team of the era, and they were cheating at a level way beyond what everone else does. It's hard to separate.
Every coach who learned under Belichick and went somewhere else has struggled, maybe it's because they don't have Brady, maybe it's because they don't have the same system in place. Mangini was very clearly opposed to the cheating, he's the only reason we know it happened he exposed it when he got the Jets job. McDaniel got the Denver job, struggled, then got caught cheating and so embarassed the owner he eventually fired him. He's now back in New England and is a genius OC again. My guess is part of the reason they struggle is they don't have a QB at the level of Tom Brady, but part is they can't come in and overnight put in the system of cheating the pats had.
After Spygate everyone assumed the Pats were done cheating but the reality is they never stopped, they've been caught doing it several times since then, the most recent one was the deflate deal.
Using stickum in an era when plays all wore gloves many of them used stickum. When Rice admitted to it he claimed everyone did it and then Carter and Irvin got mad and said I didn't, but then admitted they played with guys who did and they knew many around the NFL did. Saying everyone did it was wrong but a lots of people did.
That's not the same thing as with the Pats. They were stealing play sheets from locker rooms so much so that NFL teams started planting fake play sheets. They were stealing signs by taping teams, they taped practices, they taped walkthroughs. They bugged locker rooms. They were jamming radio signals to helmets, they were broadcasting on unlicensed radio so they could talk to Brady when NFL rules were it had to cut off before the snap. They did it at a level way beyond what we know anybody else did. And the NFL went out of their way to devise a way of detecting the hidden radio stuff and the only team they caught doing it was the Pats. The Pats got caught taping a walkthrough before a super bowl. They got caught using radio signals during a super bowl(in Arizona). It's part of the culture of that team now.
I think the Pats are a remarkable team, they continue to score in droves with all those injuries. but the problem I have is it's impossible for me to look at them and not wonder what are they doing now that the NFL hasn't figured out yet, I don't mean schematically I mean cheating wise.
I'd love to have the Cards and them play in the SB, I think they're 2 of the 3 best teams right now(with Carolina).
