Hopefully the NFL Does the Right Thing

This post is going to be kind of hard for me, as a Rams fan.  As most of the free world knows, the New England Patriots are under an ongoing investigation for taping the signals of the opponents’ coordinators, as well as the pre-game walkthroughs.  This has become known as “Spygate” because, as we all know, adding “gate” to the end of anything automatically makes it a scandal.  When former video assistant Matt Walsh stepped forward and said he did the taping, Patriots coach Bill Belichick claimed he “couldn’t pick Matt Walsh out of a lineup.”

The NFL fined Belichick $500,000 and forced the team to forfeit their first round selection in the 2008 Draft.  The latter punishment had little effect since the Patriots held the 10th pick after a trade with the 49ers from the year before. (Unfortunately for Weller, they took former Tennessee Linebacker Jerod Mayo.  An intervention was held. He’s fine now.)

Walsh is now scheduled for a meeting with Commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday morning to review the tapes.  John Clayton just reported on ESPN that he expects nothing to come of the meeting since the NFL already knew about these tapes.

Now, I don’t know if the NFL has seen the tapes or knew about the tapes before Matt Walsh sent them in for review, but I do know that video taping another team’s signals is wrong.  I also know that Walsh’s tapes range in date from 2000-2002 and that the Jets’ claims came from 2007.  I highly doubt that the Patriots stopped taping teams from 2003-2006 and happened to start again at the beginning of last season.

I talked with Weller about what kind of punishment we’d like to see the Patriots given.  He said lots of things that I can’t repeat, so I’ll let you use your imagination.  Eventually, I decided that I’d like to see Belichick suspended for at least 8 regular season games, if not the entire season.  If this were the punishment, he would miss at least two AFC East matchups as well as other key games at San Diego in Week 6 and at Indianapolis in Week 9.  I figured if Chris Henry was suspended for 8 games and Pacman Jones was suspended for a year for multiple non-football incidents, then Belichick should be suspended at least that long for an actual football-related crime.

Weller finally decided that he would be happy if they took away at least one of their Super Bowl titles.  I would be alright with this as well, but I’d rather have it matter in the present day.  It would be nice if they retroactively awarded the Rams the Super Bowl, but A) that won’t happen and B) it really wouldn’t mean that much at this point.  It would be like the NCAA taking away the Fab Five’s Final Fours,  or Reggie Bush’s Heisman.  We all know they won, it doesn’t matter if they have a trophy or a banner.

Let me know what you think should (or shouldn’t) happen to Mr. Belichick in the comments.