jiminphilly wrote:
There is no debate on what the Patriots did and got caught doing. The Eric Mangina fan base is now trying to call out Belichick for giving Eric his opportunity to coach in the NFL. In reality, Bill Belichick broke a rule; the snitch broke the coaches' code.
By exposing the dirty secret of his former boss, Pats coach Bill Belichick, Jets coach Eric Mangini broke a long-held code that NFL coaches live by: Don't go against the family. "If he wasn't before, Mangini's dead to Belichick now," says one head coach. "What Mangini did is a disgrace. He wouldn't be a coach in this league without Bill, and this is how he repays him."
It may seem absurd to think that if Belichick was blatantly violating an NFL rule -- one reenforced by two NFL memos in the last year -- the Jets should have ignored it. But last year the Lions and the Packers caught the Patriots taping and simply told them to stop without informing the league. Unlike New York, they followed the coaching fraternity's antisnitching code.
Just what is this code? First, don't mess with a former colleague's players, a tenet Mangini -- who was hired by Belichick in 1995 and rose from coaching-staff gofer to defensive coordinator -- violated in March 2006, just after he left New England for New York. Mangini signed free-agent linebacker Matt Chatham, whom the Patriots were trying to keep. By contrast, here's what then Cowboys coach Bill Parcells, who needed a kicker, did that same off-season. Though the Pats' Adam Vinatieri, one of the best of all time, was a free agent, Parcells let it be known that he wouldn't touch the kicker. Why? Vinatieri was Belichick's player, and Belichick had been a defensive assistant and coordinator under Parcells. In another example, one coach told SI last week about allowing an assistant to leave with a year remaining on his contract to join another team. There was one proviso: The team hiring the assistant couldn't sign the free agents of the team he left. On the third day of the next free-agency period, a prime free agent from the assistant's old team was signed by his new team. The assistant's former boss confronted him and said, "I'm going to tell everyone in the league I know what a no-good son of a bitch you are."
Second, don't mess with a former colleague's coaches. When onetime Parcells assistant Chris Palmer got the Browns' head job in 1999, he knew that a recommendation from Parcells, then the Jets' coach, had helped. Though Palmer wanted to hire Jets line coach Romeo Crennel to be his defensive coordinator, Palmer didn't try to get him.
Third, don't snitch. The most violated rule in the NFL is the antitampering rule: Before free agency begins in March, contact between teams and potential free agents is prohibited. Yet several G.M.'s routinely ignore the directive, and just as many decry the advantage they take -- though not loudly enough to get the offenders in trouble.
Rack jiminphilly!!
Damn, I am sorry for what I had thought of you prior to that post!!
By posting the above, you actually seem like a man! I mean a respectable intelligent man!!
I never would have expected that from you!!
Rack jim!!