Four years ago I put together this post about an ESPN messageboard poster calling themselves “NEInsider” who claimed to have a lot of inside knowledge that he shared. He didn’t make many posts, but he certainly seemed knowledgeable and well-spoken enough to consider he might actually be a New England Patriots insider.
Last night, @eomrules sent me this thread from PatsFans.com that reposted one of NEInsider’s posts that seems even more interesting now in retrospect. Remember this was posted many years ago, in the wake of Spygate.
The Kraft family was a Goodell supporter and will never openly criticize him but they are livid over the way Spygate was handled and the fact Goodell hung them out as “Cheaters” when he absolutely knew it never helped during a game and then on national TV aknowledged frivilous accusations like phone tampering etc. when he stated more punishment would be added if necessary instead of doing the right thing and stating such claims were baseless without proof since he knew we could never tamper with phones since we never knew what system or what frequency was availbale to us until game time.
This certainly raises the question of why did the Kraft’s decide to start trusting in Goodell again. Obviously Spygate happened very soon after Goodell first started so maybe they were just giving him a second chance?
I highly recommend you read the entire post, because it has a lot of interesting comments on Spygate, especially this one:
We taped defensive signals and offensive formation signals and we still have video of other teams taping us. They are of little value since no team uses the same signals even from game to game, quarter to quarter, and sometimes from series to series. We do it to FORCE the opposition to stay on thier toes and change signals hoping they mix up signals and have a bad play that results in a big play for us. There are no offensive signals only formation signals which are useless and they were taped at the same time as offensive signals and WERE possibly even on the Spygate tape. Any claims are baseless on this.
Again, this guy could be full of shit, but as you can see he doesn’t sound like your regular messageboard troll.