The story the NFL wants to see shrivel up and die but that continues to cling to life took another turn today when the league refuted a New York Times report that the Patriots were caught illegally taping a Giants defensive assistant during a preseason game in 2006.
“The report in the Times is inaccurate,” Greg Aiello, the NFL’s senior vice president of public relations, told The Post in an e-mail message. “The Patriots were not caught taping signals during the 2006 Giants-Patriots preseason game.”
Citing NFL executives, the Times stated Bill Belichick’s Patriots actually were caught taping the Giants on Aug. 31, a game won by the Giants 31-23 at Giants Stadium. The teams did not play each other during the regular season.
According to Aiello, the Giants mentioned to Ray Anderson, the league’s vice president of football operations, at the 2006 preseason game that they heard the Patriots were taping coaching signals. That’s as far as the Giants got.
“No camera person was identified,” Aiello said. “No tapes were seized. There was no formal complaint made by the Giants to the league office requesting an investigation or any other action.”
As a result, though, the following week Anderson issued a memo to all NFL teams reminding them of the policy prohibiting the videotaping of coaching signals anywhere in the stadium, including on the sidelines. That memo was cited by commissioner Roger Goodell last September when he fined Belichick $500,000, fined the Patriots $250,000, and took away the team’s first-round pick in this year’s NFL Draft as punishment for illegal taping after the Jets blew the whistle on Belichick and triggered the Spygate furor.
The furor has not ended. Michael Levy, the attorney for Matt Walsh, a former Patriots employee who claims to possess evidence that Belichick did, indeed, illegally videotape opposing teams, declined comment when reached by The Post.
The NFL wants to speak with Walsh, who was fired by the Patriots in 2003, but Levy has been holding out for a legal guarantee by the NFL lawyers that his client cannot be sued by anyone after he comes forward.
Speaking at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, Titans coach Jeff Fisher, a member of the league’s Competition Committee, said the proper justice has been meted out.
“I don’t think [the Patriots] have been unfairly singled out,” Fisher told reporters. “They violated a serious, competitive rule and they were penalized for it and we’ve moved on. See, not everybody does it. To my knowledge, this is the only team that videotaped [a] coach’s signals.”
Like the league itself, many around the game want to put this affair in the rear-view mirror.
“I think it’s done, it’s over, it’s a moot point,” said Carl Banks, the former Giants linebacker who starred for Belichick when he served as the Giants defensive coordinator. “The commissioner has levied the punishment he felt fit. It strikes me as odd that this now is coming out. I just think it needs to go away. It’s ridiculous to me. All I can say it let it go. I’m probably the wrong guy to ask because I have an allegiance to Bill Belichick and his ability to coach. If you’re saying to me Bill Belichick has to cheat to win I’m telling you you’re off your rocker, because I’ve been there. To try to make the case Bill Belichick can’t win without cheating is ridiculous.”