Patriots coach Bill Belichick reiterated on Tuesday morning that he has nothing to do with the incident at Sunday’s Bengals game in which a Patriots videographer was caught filming the field from the press box in violation of league rules.
“Yeah I’m really focused on getting ready for the Bengals here,” Belichick said on Tuesday morning, via NFL.com. “I just think all that’s being handled internally or however it’s being handled. I don’t know. Again, I have no involvement in this and no knowledge of it. I really don’t have any idea what exactly is going on. I can tell you that we’ve never, as a coaching staff, and I’ve personally have never used any video footage at all of 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 Patriots admit that the video crew they sent to Sunday’s Bengals game violated league rules, but they say it was unintentional and that the video crew was filming content for the team’s website, not anything related to the football operations or coaching staff.
In 2007, the Patriots were caught filming the Jets in violation of league rules, and they were docked a first-round draft pick. Belichick has said that since that incident, the Patriots have always been very mindful of the league’s rules about what is allowed when taping at games. But someone didn’t get the memo at the Bengals game, and if the report that the Patriots’ videographer was focused on the Bengals’ sideline for eight minutes proves true, that sounds suspiciously like what the Patriots were already punished for in Spygate.
Belichick insists this is not the same thing. If the NFL doesn’t buy that, a stiff punishment for the Patriots is likely.