Bill Belichick may be up to his cheating ways again, and this time he might have gotten help from his buddy Nick Saban. It’s a weird story and I’m not sure it even makes sense, but it comes from MMQB and it has Browns coach Mike Pettine as an on-the-record source, so…
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Do with this information what you will.
Here is the story: Mike Pettine told MMQB about the time he was at Wes Welker’s wedding, and Tom Brady was bragging to Jets linebackers coach Mike Smith that the Pats had come into possession of a couple of the Jets’ defensive playbooks.
Pettine told MMQB he was not surprised at the story, and suggested one possible way that the playbooks might have found their way to New England.
"It didn’t shock me because Rex [Ryan] would give them out like candy anyway. He gave one out to [Alabama coach Nick] Saban and I was like, “Don’t you know Saban and Bill [Belichick] are pretty good friends? I have a feeling it’s going to end up in New England.”"
And that, Mike Pettine explains, is why he didn’t put a lot of vital information in his initial Browns playbook.
So either Mike Pettine spins a good yarn, or Bill Belichick cheats by using his connections to steal playbooks. I wouldn’t put anything past Belichick, but at the same time, I’m going to need more corroboration than this. I need a little more than “Mike Pettine heard Tom Brady say at a party and Nick Saban is friends with Bill Belichick and yadda yadda.”
Highly circumstantial.
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