Bill Belichick addressed the team’s second videotaping scandal after the NFL handed down a punishment this offseason.
The league’s punishment for the New England Patriots was as follows: 1) the Patriots paid $1.1 million in club fines, 1) they lost a 2021 third-round pick and 3) the Patriots’ TV crews will not be allowed to shoot games during 2020 season. Unlike the first Spygate scandal, the NFL didn’t hit Belichick with any fines, perhaps an indicator he was not linked to the wrongdoing, which stemmed from a Patriots staffer videotaping the Cincinnati Bengals sideline during the 2019 season.
“Obviously had a long investigation on that,” Belichick said Friday on a videoconference call. “Really, we’re just looking ahead. We have a lot of things in front of us here, especially just getting ready for the season and all that. We’ve moved on. We’ll deal with what we have to do in front of us here. Just let everything go into the rearview mirror.”
New England admitted to the wrongdoing but said the transgression was inadvertent, with the staffer taking the video for a production for the team’s website. When news of the league’s investigation broke, Belichick made an effort to distance the football organization from any wrongdoing.
“Again, I have no involvement in this or knowledge of it,” he told reporters in December. “I really don’t have any idea what exactly is going on. I can tell you that we’ve never as a coaching staff — I personally have never used any video footage at all, anything that those production people have done other than what’s shown on public television or something like that.
“We don’t have anything to do with what they do, so I really don’t have much knowledge of the situation at all.”
The punishment went practically unnoticed as news broke about the Patriots signing Cam Newton within the same hour of the NFL announcing the punishment. The timing of it all seemed like an intentional effort from New England to redirect the conversation.
