How does Bill Cowher know that Spygate did not cost the Steelers two AFC title games?

... he was part of the problem, should keep his mouth shut 

Why Bill Cowher decided that he had to talk about Spygate this week is beyond me. It was probably because CBS is televising the Sunday game between the Patriots and the Steelers and they need some story lines to try and catch ESPN.

What Cowher said was that two of his teams, in 2002 and 2005, lost their AFC Championship games to the Patriots fair and square, not because New England stole Steeler signals [for seven years]. I agree with him to a point.

First, Cowher had a terrible record as a post-season coach, losing four out of five AFC championship games on the Steelers own turf. One of them was the 2001 team that was a huge favorite and the players then went on a adolescent-type of spree in which they released their own rap video. They lost that game to the Patriots, 24-17, primarily because of a blocked field goal and a returned punt for a TD.

Special teams mistakes reflect on the preparation of the team for the game.

The coach on that team deserves criticism even today for what the players did to motivate the Patriots. According to Patriots safety Lawyer Milloy, “You never disrespect anybody,” Milloy told the Boston Globe after the game about the actions of the Steeler players. “You just make it hard on yourself. I’m just surprised the veterans on that team didn’t shut the younger guys’ mouths on that team. It was a momentum-builder for us. We rallied around that, and in the end we were the AFC champions.”

Not an occasional action

What Cowher refuses to acknowledge is that this spying by the Patriots had been going on for years, and unlike other teams, they had made it into a science. In a Sept. 2015 story in ESPN the magazine, ace investigative writer Don Van Natta and Seth Wickersham outline in detail how the Pats got away with this for years aided primarily by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Goodell finally investigates his buddy Kraft's team

After many complaints, Goodell finally sent investigators to Foxboro to look into the allegations of spying.

"Inside a room accessible only to Belichick and a few others, they found a library of scouting material containing videotapes of opponents' signals, with detailed notes matching signals to plays for many teams going back seven seasons. Among them were handwritten diagrams of the defensive signals of the Pittsburgh Steelers, including the notes used in the January 2002 AFC Championship Game won by the Patriots 24-17. Yet almost as quickly as the tapes and notes were found, they were destroyed, on Goodell's orders: League executives stomped the tapes into pieces and shredded the papers inside a Gillette Stadium conference room."

ESPN the Magazine

Seven seasons, Bill Cowher, yet the Steeler management, the Rooneys, the quiet passive types who do not stir up trouble with the commissioner, docilely accepted this, as you did. The whole league knew what was taking place.

By the time that Deflategate broke in 2014, the rest of the league was furious. "Behind closed doors, Goodell addressed what he called 'the elephant in the room' and, according to sources at the meeting, turned over the floor to Robert Kraft. Then 66, the billionaire Patriots owner stood and apologized for the damage his team had done to the league and the public's confidence in pro football. Kraft talked about the deep respect he had for his 31 fellow owners and their shared interest in protecting the NFL's shield. Witnesses would later say Kraft's remarks were heartfelt, his demeanor chastened. For a moment, he seemed to well up.

"Then the Patriots' coach, Bill Belichick, the cheating program's mastermind, spoke. He said he had merely misinterpreted a league rule, explaining that he thought it was legal to videotape opposing teams' signals as long as the material wasn't used in real time. Few in the room bought it. Belichick said he had made a mistake -- 'my mistake'."

A mistake all right. The videographers were asked to try and deceiver the NFL and local security people. does not sound like a mistake. "The Patriots' videographers were told to look like media members, to tape over their team logos or turn their sweatshirt inside out, to wear credentials that said Patriots TV or Kraft Productions." Sounds like a "mistake," all right, Mr. Bellichick.

Makes Richard Nixon look like a choir boy

In fact, this went beyond videotaping. Patriots personnel would sneak into the opposing team's locker room and steal the sheet that had outlined the first 20 plays that the team would run. In fact, they went a step further with their sleazy actions.

"In 2005, for instance, they signed a defensive player from a team they were going to play in the upcoming season. Before that game, the player was led to a room where [Bellichick buddy and co-conspirator Ernie] Adams was waiting. They closed the door, and Adams played a compilation tape that matched the signals to the plays from the player's former team, and asked how many were accurate. 'He had about 50 percent of them right,' the player says now." ESPN

This story, entitled "Spygate to Deflategate: Inside what split the NFL and Patriots apart," is brutal on Bellichick. "The cheating program's mastermind."

The piece is also thorough. "Interviews by ESPN The Magazine and Outside the Lines with more than 90 league officials, owners, team executives and coaches, current and former Patriots coaches, staffers and players, and reviews of previously undisclosed private notes from key meetings, show that Spygate is the centerpiece of a long, secret history between Goodell's NFL, which declined comment for this story, and Kraft's Patriots."

No, Mr. Cowher, the Patriots have been cheating for years, and they have gotten away with it. You, as a coach at the time, were responsible for holding their feet to the fire, and now as a broadcaster, you try to minimize the transgressions. Instead, you try to sweep it under the proverbial rug.

Cowher's players from those years in which Patriots Coach Bill Bellichick stole the Steelers' signals do not agree. They include Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis and Hall of Fame receiver nominee Hines Ward.

According to ESPN, "No player was more resolute that Spygate had affected games than Hines Ward, the Steelers' All-Pro wide receiver. Ward told reporters that Patriots inside information about Steelers play calling helped New England upset Pittsburgh 24-17 in the January 2002 AFC Championship Game. 'Oh, they knew,' Ward, now an NBC analyst who didn't return messages for this story, said after Spygate broke. 'They were calling our stuff out. They knew a lot of our calls. There's no question some of their players were calling out some of our stuff'."

Destruction of the evidence

Making this more outrageous is the fact that Goodell, once his investigators had found evidence in Foxboro, ordered it destroyed, according to ESPN. "The Patriots told the league officials they possessed eight tapes containing game footage along with a half-inch-thick stack of notes of signals and other scouting information belonging to Adams, [Patriots counself Robyn] Glaser says. The league officials watched portions of the tapes. Goodell was contacted, and he ordered the tapes and notes to be destroyed, but the Patriots didn't want any of it to leave the building, arguing that some of it was obtained legally and thus was proprietary. So in a stadium conference room, Pash and the other NFL executives stomped the videotapes into small pieces and fed Adams' notes into a shredder, Glaser says. She recalls picking up the shards of plastic from the smashed Beta tapes off the floor and throwing them away."

The Cheater

Bellichick, the cheater, should never make the Hall of Fame after all of this evidence has come to light. The guy is a horrible cheater. Great coach, maybe. Definitely great cheater.

The Enabler

As for Cowher, he should keep his mouth shut about this. His teams lost those two game despite being overwhelming favorites. They were 15-1 in the 2005 game, yet again played poorly in and AFC title game. There is a great deal of evidence that cheating took place for seven years. Cowher's head was like the ostrich in the sand.

http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/13533995/split-nfl-new-england-patriots-apart