Move over spygate?
During a recent post-game for the New England Patriots and their epic Super Bowl victory over the weekend, LaDainian Tomlinson brought up the elephant in the room – regarding Tom Brady and Bill Belichick’s win. Tomlinson said that some critics would non-surprisingly put an asterisk next to the team’s success because of the infamous cheating Spygate scandal.
Well, LaDainian’s NFL Network colleague and league Hall-of-Famer, Deion Sanders, would give his two cents on the critics saying, “Those same critics, did they say anything about the wins that the Indianapolis Colts had? You want to talk about that too? Because they were getting everybody’s signals. Come on, you don’t walk up to the line and look over here and the man on the sideline giving you the defense that they’ve stolen the plays of. We all knew. L.T. knew. Everybody in the NFL knew. We just didn’t let the fans know. That was real and that was happening in Indy.”
This didn’t sit well with Tony Dungy, as he spoke with NBC’s PFT Live and said that stealing signs was perfectly legal and shouldn’t be compared to spygate. He even went to say that all 32 teams steal signs from each other and being legal for years. Take a look at his response to allegations below.
Tony Dungy giving a response to recent cheating allegations.
“I think we have to go back to what is cheating. People accusing us of cheating? I don’t think that’s the case. Stealing signals? You can go back to the 1800s in baseball, you can go anywhere there were signals done, and people were looking and watching and trying to get signals. Back in the early days of football the quarterbacks called the plays and the middle linebackers called the defenses and there was no signaling. When coaches decided, they wanted to call plays you had to find ways to get the information in and there were people watching. My coach, Chuck Noll, was a messenger guard for Paul Brown in the ’50s because Paul Brown didn’t want to have to signal because people are going to watch them.
So, that’s what happens and it’s been done legally for years. I remember in 1991, I was an assistant coach for the Kansas City Chiefs. Steve DeBerg was our quarterback. He had played seven or eight years earlier for the 49ers. We were playing the 49ers and they hadn’t changed their signals at all. Steve DeBerg called every play for us on the defensive sideline because Joe Montana and Bill Walsh hadn’t changed the signals since they’d been there. They beat us 28-14.
We knew every play and they beat us. So, that’s been part of football. When I was a coordinator we went to wristbands because people steal signals. So, you have a wristband that says No. 1 is this defense, No. 2 is this defense, you change it and everybody has done that for years and years and years. In our Super Bowl, we scored a touchdown to Reggie Wayne on a blown coverage because one of the Chicago players read the wristband wrong trying to get ahead of us.
I’ll give you the opposite side of the coin. We’re playing the Pittsburgh Steelers. I’m the coach of the Indianapolis Colts on a Monday night. Peyton Manning came to me before the game and said, ‘Bruce Arians used to be with us, is now coaching there, I know he’s told them our hand signals. I’m going to get them because I’m going to give a fake run signal and I know they’re going to bite because Bruce has told them our signals.’ And on the first play of the game, he gave a signal to Marvin Harrison, Ike Taylor, Pittsburgh’s corner, thought it was a run play, and it was an 82-yard touchdown.
That’s all part of the game, but doing it legally and illegally, that’s the difference. I hope Deion is not saying we did something illegally. Of course, we got signals when we had an opportunity to do that, and so did Deion.”
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