Defense Steps Up, to the Mike

Use of Communications Device Could Prevent Signal Stealing

The spying scandal involving the New England Patriots appears to be over, with league officials saying they don't expect to impose further sanctions on the team or Coach Bill Belichick for using videotaping equipment to steal the play signals of opposing coaches.

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But the question remains: What, if anything, can be done to try to prevent a repeat episode?

The answer, aside from relying on coaches to be honorable, probably is the ratification this offseason of a proposal to allow one defensive player per team to have a communications device in his helmet connecting him to a coach on the sideline during a game. It would put the defense on even footing with the offense, given rules that allow the quarterback to be connected to a coach in that manner. It also would eliminate the need for defensive coaches to use hand signals for play calls.

"The only thing I can think of is giving someone on the defense a microphone, too," Philadelphia Eagles safety Brian Dawkins said recently when asked what should be done to keep tactics like those employed by the Patriots from being widely used in the future. "To me, that would knock all of that out."

The proposal had the backing of the league's powerful competition committee in each of the past two offseasons but failed to generate the required support among the sport's franchise owners. It fell two votes shy of being approved in March at the annual league meetings in Phoenix, getting ratified by 22 of the 32 teams. The previous year, it received 18 votes. People around the league suspect the Patriots scandal will push it over the top next spring.

"I would think it gets approved next time around," an executive with one NFL team said yesterday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he didn't want to be viewed as getting ahead of official league deliberations on the issue. "It's been close in the past. It had the support of the [competition] committee. It had the support of most of the teams. The opposition was more about the administration of the rule than whether or not it was a good and fair rule. You would think people would consider it a dire need to get it approved now, given what's come out about what goes on, and that would give you the extra votes."

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell fined Belichick, the Patriots' three-time Super Bowl-winning coach, $500,000 and the team $250,000 after videotaping equipment was confiscated from a club employee on the field at Giants Stadium during the team's season-opening game against the New York Jets.

Goodell also stripped the Patriots of at least one draft choice next spring, a first-rounder if the team qualifies for this season's playoffs (or second- and third-rounders if it doesn't). Goodell ordered the Patriots to turn over all materials related to their videotaping program. Last week, the league announced the Patriots had complied, and an NFL spokesman said no further discipline was expected.

When the competition committee recommended the proposal last year to outfit a defensive player with a helmet communication device, Atlanta Falcons President and General Manager Rich McKay, the committee's co-chairman, called it "competitively fair." Most teams agreed. But some were wary because of the shuffling of defensive players on and off the field during a game.

What happens, they wondered, if the defensive player with the communications device gets hurt, or leaves the game during the normal substitution pattern? Could another player wear the device? If so, would the officials have to monitor constantly whether only one defensive player on the field had the device?

"I can understand the sentiment for it," Seattle Seahawks Coach Mike Holmgren said at the league meeting, "but I think it creates another level of problems."

This season, the league is experimenting with having a green dot on the back of the helmet of a quarterback outfitted with the device. That system perhaps could be used in the future to make certain only one defensive player with a helmet communications device would be on the field at a time.

It's a proposal, it seems, whose time has come, thanks to Belichick and the Patriots.