Dunlap: Belichick, Brady Can't Break Free From Shadow Of Cheating
Colin Dunlap is a featured columnist at CBSPittsburgh.com. He can also be heard weekdays from 5:40 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Sports Radio 93-7 "The Fan." You can e-mail him at colin.dunlap@cbsradio.com. Check out his bio here.
That big asterisk next to all the accomplishments of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady --- in my estimation at least --- stayed just as large after what happened on Sunday in the AFC title game against the Denver Broncos.
Heck, if anything, that asterisk might have even grown a bit.
Maybe you won't, maybe you don't feel like it or maybe you just don't care because they provide entertainment, but I'll go ahead and push it to this level, I'll go ahead and say it: Until The New England Patriots push forth and win a Super Bowl without the suspicion of cheating or downright proof that they did along the way, I'm going to consider everything they did in the Belichick/Brady regime a fraud.
If that's harsh, I don't care.
If you think that's off-base, I'm not really concerned.
You go ahead and say, "prove that they were cheating that whole time" and I will counter with "try to prove that they weren't" and see how far you get defending these none-too-sympathetic figures.
Because the crux of it all is that there's no way in the universe you will ever convince me the Patriots began to cheat just before they were caught doing so. You will never convince me they got pinched the first time the acted like swindlers.
That said, whether it was Spygate, Deflategate, the jamming of headsets, sneaking into visiting locker rooms and stealing play sheets before games or some other transgression, this was the New England Patriots' opportunity --- at least it seemed --- to march onward and win a Super Bowl on the up-and-up.
This was their chance to do it fair and square.
This was their chance to break free from under the shadow of cheating and duplicitous behavior.
They didn't.
As much of the country was buried beneath a winter storm and glued to the television on Sunday afternoon, Peyton Manning and his band of merry Broncos held off Brady's boys right to the bitter end.
And with it, to me at least, the chance to validate a true accomplishment went out the window for both Brady and Belichick.
Is it harsh that I'm not buying any of the accomplishments of a coach who took over the franchise in 2000 and a quarterback who became the full-time starter a year later? Maybe to you it is. To me, however, it is perfectly reasonable.
I don't need to give a proven cheater any benefit of the doubt. And I won't.
There has simply been too much smoke in the time since Belichick took over. There's been fire, too --- like that $500,000 fine Belichick had to pay for Spygate, the p.s.i. in those footballs a season ago and those scathing postgame remarks Mike Tomlin gave about the Patriots' stadium headsets earlier this season.
Belichick and Brady had a chance to clear the air by winning the Super Bowl this season --- or at least doing it sometime before they retire and doing it without the suspicion of cheating.
Until then, until they do that, I'm perfectly OK thinking many of their lofty accomplishments were done so using smoke and mirrors.