FBG Watercooler: What's worse? Stealing Signals or Bounty Program (1 Viewer)

[Joe Bryant]

FBG Watercooler: What's worse? Patriots stealing signals with videotape again or New Orleans "Cash for Crush" Bounty from 2011? What's worse?

 

[Ramblin Wreck]

Voted New Orleans because it involves player safety.  But as many times as the Patriots have been caught cheating or doing shady stuff I think their penalties at this point should be the most severe ever handed out by the NFL.

 

[TheIronSheik]

Other:  Banging on trash cans to signal pitches.  That's like on the scale of genocide.  

 

[Osaurus]

For me, both are bad, but intentionally hurting players for is inexcusable. 

 

[Foosball God]

For me, both are bad, but intentionally hurting players for is inexcusable. 

This

 

[Parrothead]

changing address labels on equipment bags

 

[Bob Sacamano]

On the one hand, career-ending injuries.  On the other hand, the Patriots.

Coin flip imo

 

[Joe Bryant]

On the one hand, career-ending injuries.  On the other hand, the Patriots.

Coin flip imo

Understood. 

I do think that skews the poll results. The public perception and feeling towards New England is not the same as what it is for New Orleans. 

 

[Mr. Ected]

Not a Pats fan, but..."Cash for Crush" and Astros stealing signs happened during the game. Spygate 2.0 happened before the game. Cinci could have been using an entirely different system that doesn't help the Pats in any way (unlikely, but still could be).

 

[Zow]

It's really, really bad that the Pats have repeated the same cheating but the intentionally hurting other players is just about as bad as it gets. 

 

[TLEF316]

Bounty gate was morally worse, without question.

What the Patriots did was against the rules, but not inherently "Bad".

Not at all shocked if they've continued to do it and just not get caught.  They dont care.

 

[The Tick]

Understood. 

I do think that skews the poll results. The public perception and feeling towards New England is not the same as what it is for New Orleans. 

I don't think it's necessarily that, especially since the New England option is losing pretty heavily, and I voted for NE.  I guess to me it depends if you are considering the question of morality vs effect on football, a game I enjoy watching, and I took it as the latter.  Those guys are already out there trying to inflict physical pain on each other in order to win the game.  So while morally giving the guys a "bonus" when that ends up with a player leaving the game is wrong, I don't really think it changed the way those guys were playing because they were getting some small cash bonus.  They were already trying to hit as hard as they could and inflict pain on the opposing team, every defense is.  Also, on the field it was being done within the rules of the game, guys could get penalized, or thrown out of they violated those.  I just don't think "bountygate" was changing the way the game was being played by the team.  Spygate on the other hand was a coordinated behind the scenes effort to take an unfair advantage in the game that the other team did not have.  So for this poll I considered it the "worse" of the two options.

 

[GroveDiesel]

What do you mean by worse?

If you mean what is objectively the worse offense when compared side by side, it’s the Saints Bounty program IMO. 

If you mean who should receive the more harsh penalty (making the assumption that the Patriots were actually cheating this time and BB etc knew about this), then I vote the Patriots because of their pattern of breaking the rules in a similar manner.

The Saints and those involved were pretty heavily penalized. Maybe it should have been more, but it wasn’t and none of them have been involved in something similar to anyone’s knowledge. Breaking the same rules over and over calls for an extreme penalty at some point as clearly the previous penalties have not been enough to deter the behavior and clearly the team views the benefit they gain from cheating to be worth more than the penalties they’ve previously received.

 

[Sullie]

The problem I have is that you have the 6 time world champions, with the super bowl hero GOAT QB lead by the unparalleled coaching genius in the entire history of football (I watch a lot of ESPN, they're never wrong) stealing signals from the zero championship, 1-win this year, rookie coach led Cincinnati Bengals who, by the way, are owned by Mike Brown.  Mike Brown.  I'm pretty sure Mike Brown still thinks the Bengals play at Riverfront Stadium.  It's like Jeff Bezos stealing the money out of a homeless guys charity hat, then taking the hat, kicking him and laughing as he walks away.