NFL Spy Games: The Biggest Loser

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick has earned a fair amount of enmity through the years. Rivals are always going to resent a winner, and the press can't stomach a man who is not only arrogant but who makes their jobs so much more difficult with his team's zipped-lips approach to communication.

Still, I was a little surprised to see the piling on when it came to some of the recommended punishments for his videotaping violation. Once the Belichick bashers realized that they would not get to see him drawn and quartered, they clamored for everything from a lengthy suspension to forfeits of games past to—if you can imagine this one—a forfeit of a future playoff game. And they whined that the $500,000 fine to the coach, $250,000 to the team and the loss of a first-round draft choice was little more than a slap on the wrist.

I haven't heard much sense—and have heard a lot of nonsense—from the Monday Night Football crew in recent years. But the addition of the insightful Ron Jaworski has helped transform Tony Kornheiser back into his smart and witty self. And Kornheiser nailed it this week when he said that the penalty was, in fact, huge, not lenient. Never mind that the Belichick fine was five times bigger than any previous fine of a coach. The loss of a number-one draft choice is a severe blow to a team that, for all the attention paid its free agents, like Randy Moss and Adalius Thomas, has always built primarily through the draft.

Anyone who watched the Patriots dismember the San Diego Chargers Sunday night couldn't have missed the impact of Belichick's recent first draft choices on that game. Defensive linemen Vince Wilfork (2004) and Ty Warren (2003) stuffed all-everything running back LaDainian Tomlinson, despite missing all-pro defensive lineman Richard Seymour (2001). The offense ripped apart the vaunted Chargers defense, running Laurence Maroney (2006) behind left guard Logan Mankins (2005) and Tom Brady's first touchdown pass was to tight end Ben Watson (another 2004 first-round pick). With two number-one picks in the 2008 draft, his own and San Francisco's, Belichick was poised to control the board and to reload again.

Still, as I wrote last week, Belichick loves nothing more than to play the "nobody respects us" card in order to motivate his team. But given the way everyone—fans, sportswriters, odds-makers—had fawned over this 2007 Patriots team during the preseason, Belichick was finding it difficult to sell that "poor, put-upon us" message to his team. Not anymore. ProFootballTalk.com reports that its sources say that Belichick is so incensed over this flap that he has new and urgent motivation to run the table and let an undefeated season answer his critics. That would seem impossible, given that the Pats have the third-hardest schedule in the NFL (based on last year's records). But don't forget that over 2003 and 2004 Belichick's Pats won 21 straight games, including a record 18 regular-season games in a row. And that team, at least on paper, didn't match up to the monster squad Belichick has assembled in Foxboro this year. So far the Pats have stomped two of last year's playoff teams—and without two of their most valuable defensive leaders: Seymour, who is out with an injury for at least four more games, and Rodney Harrison, who has to sit out a drug suspension for two more weeks.

If Belichick emerges a big winner out of this spy brouhaha, that would certainly pass for major irony. But it may not be the biggest irony ahead. It is beginning to look as though New York Jets coach Eric Mangini, the onetime Pats assistant who dropped the dime on his former mentor, may be destined to emerge from this as the big loser. That was signaled after the Jets' second game and second loss of the season, when Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick blasted the Jets' "illegal" tactics of calling out signals in an attempt—an ultimately successful one—to draw his team offsides. Or, in other words, the Jets cheated.