A Bengals employee believes they saw a New England Patriots scout recording the Cincinnati coaches and staff on the sidelines for the entire first quarter, according to ESPN’s Dianna Russini.
Similarly, The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Dave Clark and Tyler Dragon reported Cincinnati staffers “believe the Patriots were stealing signs from the Bengals sideline during Week 14’s game in Cleveland.”
The Patriots sent an advance scout to watch the Bengals-Browns game, as is standard procedure in the NFL. However, the scout arrived with a video team, which Bill Belichick said was there to film the scout for a documentary series for Patriots.com called “Do Your Job.” The Bengals saw it differently, and notified NFL officials, who took the video recording.
The NFL and the Bengals have a copy of the tape, per Russini. The Patriots do not. Neither the NFL nor the Bengals would release that tape to ESPN.
The tape, of course, should provide obvious evidence one way or another. If it contains sideline recordings, it’s a clear breach of the rules. If the video shows nothing more than an interview with the scout, it is likely not an issue.
During Belichick’s weekly appearance on WEEI’s “Ordway, Merloni and Fauria” on Monday, the coach said the Patriots were “absolutely not” recording the Bengals’ signals.
“As I understand it, they were taping him — trying to show kind of what an advanced scout does,” Belichick said. “A scout can’t film the opponents as an advanced scout. Our video people are not even allowed to point the camera at the opponents in pregame warmups or their side of the field or anything else to test out their equipment. They 100 percent know — all of our scouts and all of our video people — what that is. Again, I have nothing to do with TV production shows.”
