Doug, i appreciate that you seem to believe that other teams have been going easy on the Patriots until now, I really do. But come on.
As an example, the Patriots were likely robbed of a title by cheaters in 2006. Like when the dolphins bought tapes of brady's line calls, beat the hell out of him, then bragged about it. The NFL didn't investigate or throw the book at the dolphins. But by today's standards, apparently that was a no no.
If the dolphins don't cheat that game, the Colts wouldn't have had the chance to host their afc championship game, as both teams finished 12-4. The Patriots were soundly beating the Colts in the first half of the game, and then the problems started happening. The Patriots audio went out. Crowd noise was not only pumped in, it was caught on tv, because they accidentally played it in a loop. And with several patriots dealing with the flu, the Colts accidentally dialed up the temperature, causing several of them to leave the game puking. Manning would go on to stage a huge comeback, which led to his only championship. Despite his rocky history against the Patriots, this was the only game during that run where he didn't have multiple turnovers. And the winner of that game got to play the Rex Grossman bears.
But these things weren't investigated. There was no tape gate, no headset gate, no crowd noise gate, no heat gate. As it should be. No quarter asked and non given.
This is a battle in the court of public opinion, always has been. And if some other team gets caught cheating against the Patriots - again - the response from most fans will be good, they deserved it. It's part of being on top.