We've made it through nearly an entire workday without mention of some new evidence in an old Patriots cheating scandal. So that's something. But former linebacker Willie McGinest, who won three Super Bowls with the Patriots, says that the team never cheated during his 12 seasons there, and if they had New England would now have five Lombardi Trophies.
"I heard some of the things that were in the report and I could sit here and honestly say I was never handed a game plan from another team that we found in the other team’s locker room," McGinest said Tuesday on NFL Network's Total Access, via WEEI.com. "We were never shown tape from any teams practicing. Instead of three Super Bowls, we would have had five.
"You give us the answers to the test then no team would have come close to beating us, especially games that we won in the Super Bowls by three points or less, tight football games. Now, if a team is stupid enough to leave their shot sheets or [gameplans] in the locker room or leave their plays on the grease board — which I’m sure all teams know this goes on — then that’s their fault."
As for stealing signs, McGinest says, "It happens," adding, "We listened to John Madden and [Pat] Summerall talk about it in 1992."
"I’m sure it happens," McGinest continued. "But like I said, we were never given information from what our coaches or somebody say, 'We just saw this happen, we just saw these plays implemented or we just saw tape of this.' Or, 'Here’s a shot sheet -- we’re going to change our whole entire game plan based around what we got.' Because also in that report they said they had dummy shot sheets and dummy calls and all of those different things. So if you go out and you prepare for a team and you watch what they do and what they do well and the formations and all of the different things it takes to get ready for a Sunday game, then you can basically understand what they’re going to do; what they’re good at and what they’re not good at.
"But at no time when I was a Patriot [did anybody] ever hand me something. Now, we had keys and we tendencies and things like that, and there were a couple games where teams probably did leave stuff in there and coach had a hunch they would run certain things. It happens in every locker room. When we were on the road, we had a guy stay behind, pick up all of the game plans, pick up all of the playbooks that players would leave, erase all of the grease boards and stay in there to make sure nothing was picked up from the other team."
Wherever the truth lies, this fact remains: Perceived or otherwise, the Patriots have cultivated a built-in advantage because opponents are so over-the-top paranoid about the possibility of impropriety when facing New England.
