Warren Sapp is set to catch hell for this one.
The Hall of Fame defensive tackle was in the Dominican Republic for Big Papi Ortiz’ charity event, when the subject of the Boston NFL team came up via WEEI.
Possibly knowing it would stir up some controversy, Sapp went all in on the Patriots “cheating” ways, but acknowledged that “your not trying” if “your not cheating.”
“They cheat,” Sapp said. “But, if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying to win’.”
Sapp referred to a 2000 incident to describe his claim.
I’m going to tell you what happened. When Tony Dungy took us, the 2000 Tampa Bay Buccaneers up there for Week 1, we dumped all our playbooks in Tampa,” Sapp said. “We had a bin outside the bus. [Dungy] said throw all your playbooks in here. So all our offensive players threw their playbooks in there. The reason I remember this is, is it was Keyshawn Johnson’s first game in Tampa. He was running around the hotel that whole Saturday night going, ‘How the hell am I going to remember the plays?’ Like, really? We’ve been working on them since the summer, you don’t remember them yet? That is when I realized he wasn’t an astute of a player. We went out and got off to a 14-0 lead and [they] came rumbling back after the second half. How many people come to Foxboro and have a 14-point lead? It’s usually the other way around, right? That’s how y’all cheat.”
Sapp said the Patriots have even cheated since Deflategate, citing the Week 1 game against the Steelers when the Steelers’ headsets went out on the sideline.
“The latest example would be [Thursday] night when Mike Tomlin was sitting there listening to y’all’s radio broadcast in his headphones,” Sapp said. “How do you explain that? And then they tell people it was raining and it wasn’t raining at that point, you know that right? At the beginning of the game it wasn’t raining and that was the narrative that came out the next morning. I remember Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth because I’ve worked with Cris. I remember his face going, ‘Well, how do you explain this?’ Tomorrow morning we’ll put a spin on it. We will tell you it was raining, the communication and something went wrong.”
“Listen, man, I don’t have any problem with [Bill] Belichick and anything they are doing up there,” Sapp added. “They are winning. I believe in cheating. If you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying to win.”
Sapp then suggested that Belichick has a group of non-football geeks who give him ideas about the game, the an advanced coach wouldn’t think of.
It’s awesome stuff, I mean Sapp believes they cheat, but agrees that you’re not really trying to be a champion if you don’t.