One day into the NFL season, the floodgates are already open for Patriots cheating allegations
One week after Tom Brady's Deflategate suspension was overturned, and only several days since ESPN's bombshell "Spygate" report, the Steelers are accusing the Patriots of tampering with their headset connections during the game.
During the first half, the Steelers claim their headsets were tuned into the local radio broadcast of the game. NFL rules require that if one team's connection is lost, the other team may not use their headsets. When NFL personnel approached the Patriots about their headsets, the Steelers claim their connection was magically repaired.
After the game, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said, "That's always the case [at Gillette Stadium]."
This wasn't the only complaint from the Steelers, though. In a second-half rally, the Steelers were called for a false start on a third-and-goal. Ben Roethlisberger argued the Patriots did a "line slide" during his pre-snap cadence - a move that could fool offensive lines (via USA Today's Tom Pelissero):
"I thought that there was a rule against that. Maybe there's not. Maybe it's just an unwritten rule. … We saw it on film, that the Patriots do that. They shift and slide and do stuff on the goal line, knowing that it's an itchy trigger finger-type down there."
Steelers guard Ramon Foster added, "They time [the slide] up in the cadence. Yeah, that's one of the things they do. Welcome to Foxborough."
One day into the season, there are already two new cheating allegations against the Patriots. Complaints about radio miscommunications are nothing new. As ProFootball Talk's Michael David Smith points out, teams complained their radio communications were jammed up in Foxborough during the same period as the Spygate investigation.
Even if the latter complaint about a line slide isn't exactly cheating, it's the type of gray area the Patriots specialize in exploiting. During the offseason, the NFL made an official rule banning the tricky formation the Patriots used in the playoffs, in which they completed pass after pass to a receiver disguised as a lineman. Ravens coach John Harbaugh later called it "deception."
As a former Patriots assistant told ESPN, "You'd want Bill and Ernie [Adams] doing your taxes. They would find all the loopholes, and then when the IRS would close them, they'd find more."
In light of the Spygate report, the allegations in Deflategate, and the new allegations, the NFL world is increasingly comfortable in making their suspicions public. And that right is earned to a certain extent. The Patriots may have a larger target than other teams, but there's valid reasoning behind these accusations. No other team has found themselves surrounded by controversy as much as the Patriots in the last 10 years, and it seems to have now reached the point where teams don't consider it taboo to publicly say they suspect the Patriots of foul play.
After the newest Spygate report, Bill Simmons took to Twitter to defend the Patriots, and though Simmons is an unabashed Patriots fan, he made a good point: