FOXBOROUGH, Mass. â Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly has heard air traffic control coming in over the headsets he uses to communicate with his staff. Former Ravens coach Brian Billick said he once heard a pizza delivery guy.
So when the Pittsburgh Steelers coaches started picking up the home radio broadcast on their headsets, there shouldnât have been any cause for suspicion.
Except they were at the home of the twice-convicted New England Patriots.
âThe whole world sees it,â Cleveland Browns linebacker Karlos Dansby said on Friday, a day after the Steelersâ headsets went out in the Patriotsâ 28-21 victory. âEverybody (saw) it last night. Youâre like, âWhat? The headsets? What?â Câmon, man. Youâve got to be kidding me.â
On the night the Super Bowl champions were hoping to turn from âDeflategateâ to their title defense, the Patriots instead found themselves denying new allegations of shenanigans from Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and a chorus around the NFL complaining that the headset technology seems to fail more often in New England.
Tomlinâs clenched-jaw postgame news conference gave new life to league-wide suspicion that something sinister is at work whenever something goes wrong against the Patriots. After describing the problem with the headsets on Thursday night, Tomlin told reporters, âThatâs always the case.â
âHere?â he was asked.
âYes,â Tomlin said.
Patriots coach Bill Belichick responded on Friday that âitâs just not rightâ for opponents and their fans to attribute the teamâs success â six trips to the Super Bowl, and four NFL titles â to dirty tricks involving videotaping, deflated footballs and now headsets.
âI think itâs just sad commentary and itâs gone to a pretty low level. Itâs sunk pretty deep,â Belichick said, breaking his silence on the âDeflategateâ scandal and an ESPN report last week citing 90 sources around the league â many of them anonymous, and many of them suspicious of the Patriotsâ techniques.
âTo take away from what those teams accomplished ⌠itâs just not right,â Belichick said.
The league agreed with the Patriots â at least in this case.
NFL spokesman Michael Signora said in a statement late Friday afternoon that the audio interference was âentirely attributable to an electrical issue made worse by the inclement weather.â
âIt involved no manipulation by any individual,â he said. âThe Patriots had nothing to do with it.â
The latest accusations came just as the Patriots were trying to celebrate their fourth Super Bowl title and change the subject from the deflated footballs scandal that dominated the last seven months.
Patriots quarterback â and reigning Super Bowl MVP â Tom Brady was originally suspended four games in connection with the deflated footballs. A federal judge vacated the suspension last week, ruling that the penalty wasnât allowed by the union contract and clearing Brady to play in the opener.
âThey get away with it. He got off,â Steelers linebacker Lawrence Timmons said.
It was the second time the organization has been penalized by the league for taking liberties with the rules, following the 2007 âSpygateâ brouhaha in which Belichick was caught illegally videotaping opponentsâ signals.
âDonât forget about Spygate now. Thatâs Real Deal Holyfield right there. It doesnât get any bigger than that,â Dansby said. âAt this point, nothing is going to happen to these guys. Theyâre âTeflon Donâ all the way across the board.â
Former NFL assistant coach and player Steve Jackson said he recalls headsets failing to work at New England when he was working for the Bills and Redskins, dating back to 2001. âIt has been going on for a long time,â he said.
âI guess after âDeflategateâ and âSpygateâ people are like, âEnough is enough,ââ Jackson said.
But others werenât willing to blame the problem on the Patriots.
Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said on Friday that reception is so bad in parts of the Superdome in New Orleans he knows what dead spots to avoid. Saints coach Sean Payton has the same problem â even though heâs at home.
But that doesnât mean he doesnât try to find someone to blame.
âGenerally itâs some frequency issue. Oftentimes itâs not our guyâs fault,â he said. âAnd yet I would say 100 percent of the time, I yell at him.â
Browns coach Mike Pettine said New England is no worse than other places, but the fact that the Patriots have won so much makes people wonder about the reason for their success. He said he is aware of areas in Miami where âyouâre marking spots on the ground, âDo not stand here.ââ
âYou just you learn each stadium and there are issues, there are dead spots,â he said. âIf the Dolphins had built a dynasty somehow, would people then be accusing them of it? Probably.
âI do know (the Patriots) have one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game, one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the game. ⌠Their teams are always very fundamentally sound,â Pettine said. âThatâs why they win.â
AP Sports Writers Tom Withers, Dennis Waszak, Brett Martel, Janie McCauley, Rob Maaddi, Will Graves and Larry Lage and freelancers Dale Grdnic and Gethin Coolbaugh contributed to this story.
AP NFL website: http://pro32.ap.org and http://twitter.com/APâNFL
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