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Spygate (2007) Modified: 09/21/2016">to top ⤴home ⇐awards ⤵
TEAM: The New England Patriots
SEVERITY:
SUMMARY: The Patriots were disciplined for videotaping their September 9, 2007 regular-season 38-14 road victory against the New York Jets from the wrong location. The Patriots filmed from an unapproved sideline location instead of from an approved indoor location.
Coincidentally, the Jets had engaged in the same filming activity during their November 12, 2006 regular season game against the Patriots in Foxborough. During that game, a Jets cameraman was caught filming the game and Patriots signals and removed from the stadium. A year later, as a form of payback, the Jets flagged the Patriots for the same activity.
Videotaping your opponents offensive and defensive signals during a game is not prohibited by the league, even today. However, there are places in the stadium where you are allowed and not allowed to film from. According to the 2007 NFL Game Operations Manual, legal game videotaping locations "must be enclosed on all sides with a roof overhead."
VICTIM: New York Jets (and Roger Goodell's ego)
PUNISHED? Yes
PUNISHMENT: As punishment for filming the game from the wrong location, NFL commissioner and former Jets public relations intern Roger Goodell fined Patriots head coach Bill Belichick $500,000, fined the Patriots $250,000, and docked the team their original first-round selection in the 2008 NFL Draft.
PEDSgate (5x since 2007) Modified: 09/20/2016">to top ⤴home ⇐awards ⤵
TEAM: The New England Patriots
SEVERITY:
SUMMARY: Performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) are used by players to illegally improve athletic performance above what legal training and preparation can do.
Players who illegally improve their performance unfairly penalize players who follow the rules. They not only put those players at risk for physical injury, but they also affect their economic livelihood by impacting their perceived value and their ability to secure appropriately-valued playing contracts.
SEVERITY = 0.5 video cameras per punished incident. Includes all documented infractions from 1960 to present with this Wikipedia page as the primary source.
- S Rodney Harrison (2007)
- LB Brandon Spikes (2010)
- DE Jermaine Cunningham (2012)
- RB Brandon Boldin (2012)
- DE Rob Ninkovich (2016)
VICTIM: The entire league
PUNISHED? Yes
PUNISHMENT: Each player was suspended for four games for violating the league's PEDs policy.
IRgate (2013)to top ⤴home ⇐awards ⤵
TEAM: The New England Patriots
SEVERITY:
SUMMARY: Reported Micheal David Smith of ProFootballTalk.com: "Two former Patriots say the team put false information about them on official injury reports."
"Brandon Spikes and Aqib Talib have both said since leaving New England in free agency that when they were on the Patriots last year, the team gave them injury designations that weren’t accurate. Spikes ended last season on injured reserve with a knee injury, and there were reports that Patriots coach Bill Belichick actually put Spikes on IR because Spikes had shown up late to practice. Spikes seemed to confirm that in an interview on WGR in Buffalo."
Said Talib: "The Patriots have their way of reporting stuff, but I haven’t had a hip problem since Tampa, the injury I had was actually a quad injury. It was reported as a hip injury, but that’s how they do things."
VICTIM: The entire league
PUNISHED? No
PUNISHMENT: This could just be the bitching of two disgruntled ex-employees or it may really be "how they do things" up in Foxborough. We'll assume that it is somewhere in the middle. The league never investigated the claims and the Patriots were never penalized for the accusations leveled by Talib and Spikes.
