Did Sean McDermott think the New England Patriots were up to something?
The Buffalo Bills coach spotted a pair of Patriots staffers, including Bill Belichick’s son Brian, on the corner of the field during warmups Sunday. McDermott approached the men and appeared to shoo them off the field and away from the Bills’ work. As McDermott left the field, he and Brian Belichick, a coaching assistant, had an animated discussion, which seemed to be about where the Patriots’ staffers could and could not stand.
It seemed New England’s staff — including Bill Belichick — walked along the Bills sideline back to the locker room following warmups. Belichick and these two staffers lingered for a few moments after the rest of the team had headed into the tunnel. When Belichick turned in, the two staffers stuck around until McDermott ushered them off the field, according to WROC-TV’s Thad Brown.
The Patriots, of course, have a history of bending and breaking the rules. New England placed cameras in illegal locations around stadiums in an effort to tape opponents’ signals. You know the scandal: Spygate.
With that history, surely, this will become a story — even if the Patriots’ actions aren’t particularly reprehensible. Those coaches likely violated an unwritten rule: don’t watch a warmup from that vantage point. But of course that warmup is visible to everyone in the stadium, including media members and staffers who are walking the sideline and viewing from other places in the building.
You can’t blame McDermott for shooing them away. But in reality, they probably weren’t gleaning anything significant that staffers in the coaching boxes couldn’t see.
