Long since the days of leather helmets and the V-formation, the National Football League has embraced technological advances that have brought dizzying changes to coaching strategy in the past decade.
With the advances have come new temptations for coaches to gain an unfair advantage. Every Monday in football season, the league says, it fields complaints from and about many teams.
If a persistent problem is identified, the league’s competition committee suggests changes to rules. In discussions of changes since 2000, one team, the New England Patriots, has surfaced more than any other, according to a longtime NFL team executive with direct knowledge of the meetings.
The committee heard that the Patriots had taped opposing coaches’ signals, placed microphones on defensive players to steal quarterbacks’ audible signals and manipulated clocks and coach-to-quarterback radio systems.
The league has handled the complaints internally, finding no proof for most of them, said its chief spokesman, Greg Aiello. Few of the complaints have drawn disciplinary action. Last year, when the Patriots were caught using video cameras to steal defensive signals, the team and its coach, Bill Belichick, were fined, and the team forfeited a first-round draft pick. Since then, a former team employee has sent the league videotapes containing evidence of similar spying dating to 2000.
A spokesman for the Patriots, Stacey James, said the accusations were without merit, except for a videotaping violation to which the team has admitted.
In an e-mail message responding to questions posed by The New York Times, James said, "We believe that this inquiry is patently biased and that a truly objective report would investigate all instances of these complaints, not exclusively those against the Patriots."
Even when suspicions and accusations have not resulted in disciplinary action, an internal committee has responded to them during the updating of the league’s confidential rulebook, known as the game operations manual, to keep pace with the high-tech spying complaints, league officials say.
"What we wanted to do was give some clarification, give some forewarning that we have new technologies, too," said Ray Anderson, the league’s executive vice president for football operations, who oversaw the changes to the manual. "We did all of that, very frankly, to upgrade after we saw in various places and heard in various places the suspicions by a variety of folks."
|
