Bill Belichick Responds To Bengals’ Allegations

The New England Patriots may be in trouble despite the fact that they didn’t do anything. It looks like the Cincinnati Bengals weren’t happy to see a Patriot staffer in Cleveland. According to them, the staffer was video-taping the Bengals sideline from the press box during Sunday’s Bengals-Cleveland Browns game. Patriots head coach Bill Belichick discussed the allegations during his appearance on WEEI’s “Ordway, Merloni and Fauria.”

Belichick knows about the problem, and he said it was the team’s production people. He as a coach has nothing to do with anything they produce, direct or shoot. Belichick has never seen any of the taps. According to him, the team has zero involvement with the incident. He encouraged everyone to talk to the production people to determine what really happened in Cleveland. Belichick and his players have never seen anything the production makes other than what’s been released on TV.

“Yeah, I heard about this, and evidently this is our production people on the TV show that were there,” he said. “I have absolutely nothing to do — we have absolutely nothing to do with anything that they produce, direct, shoot or anything. I’ve never even seen any of their tapes or anything else. So this is something that we 100 percent have zero involvement with. This is something that you would have to talk to the production people about and what they were doing and whatever it was. We’ve never seen anything that they’ve shot, other than what’s been on TV.”

Doug Kyed reported that the Patriots have sent a production team to Cleveland to record footage of the Patriots’ advance scout for the team’s “Do Your Job” web series.

The head coach repeatedly said the team has zero involvement with any bit of the production department. The department also makes other team-related shows. Belichick also said the scout wasn’t recording the Bengals’ sideline. If by any chance you don’t know this, it’s illegal to point a camera at other team’s sideline. Belichick knows this and pretty much everyone in the NFL knows it. The Patriots know the rules, and they’d never break one.

“I guess there’s some kind of (show) that they do with different departments,” Belichick said. “They have trainers and equipment people and scouts and so forth. Again, I have no idea, so you’d have to talk to them about exactly what the project was. But from a football standpoint, we have absolutely nothing to do with the production people and what they do for the TV show and everything else, other than I tape a TV show with them. But there’s no involvement whatsoever with them. I’ve never seen a tape or anything that they’ve shot anywhere in any capacity.”

The Patriots coach also said that the team staffers in attendance turned over the recordings to the Bengals and the league. New England had permission from the Browns to shoot B-roll of the advance scout in the press box. However, the Bengals didn’t know anything about this.

“A scout can’t film the opponents as an advance scout, and our video people aren’t even allowed to point a camera at our opponents in pregame warmup or their side of the field or anything else to test out their equipment,” Belichick said. “They 100 percent know — all of our scouts, all of our video people and everything — they absolutely know what that is. And again, I have nothing to do with the TV production shows. I have no idea what they do or what their projects are or anything else.

“From a football standpoint, we absolutely know what the rules are, and we are 100 percent compliant, to the best of my knowledge, with every single rule that we’re responsible for. What another part of the organization does or doesn’t do as part of their — whether it’s a game presentation or TV shows or stuff like that — I have no idea what that is.”

Let’s see how will this end for the Patriots. They are getting ready for Cincinnati, and hopefully, this incident won’t affect their game. It shouldn’t affect, because the cameraman had nothing to do with Belichick’s game planning. New England is off to a win this time. They lost the match against the Kansas City Chiefs.