It does make you wonder how much of the cheating and other illegal things the Patriots have done over the years that has had a direct impact on their success?
Can anyone sum up?
He taped somebodies practice (x2?). The football air pressures (tho that may have been more Brady). I cant remember everything.
We know Spygate ranged from 2001-2007, then with them being caught again in that Cincy "misunderstanding" in 2019 you can infer they continued at some point, most likely soon after being caught in September, 2007 because, well, why wouldn't they? Who would stop cheating when you received 3 SB "wins" for a draft pick and a small fine? Deflategate overlaps, but you can probably guess that it started in 2006, when Brady approached the league about allowing teams to bring their own 12 balls to games and continued to the end of 2014. I personally think this is the lesser of the 2 offenses because a better grip on the ball can help cut down fumbles and maybe allow you to throw better in certain conditions, but it is not a system-wide issue like knowing the other team's signals and, according to Flutie, being able to guess their play over 80-85% of the time. I equate Deflategate more to a handful of players using stickum back in the day and I think the risk of being caught again was high as teams would likely be ready to pounce if it felt like brady's balls were a little soft again. So they may have stopped that form of cheating, unless I am giving them too much credit. Both are wrong and unfortunately players do cheat sometimes, but nothing I can imagine would offset (illegally) knowing what the other team is doing as a whole.
To answer your question with my opinion, ANUFan, I look at the cheated Superbowl victory margins. The first 3 were 3 points or less, one was a 4 point victory, one was 6 and the last one was 10. Then look at the close games they often won to get into those SB's. If cheating isn't helping you gain a few extra points, why take the risk to cheat?
Then there's the butterfly effect. I believe that brady is very possibly or probably a name we would all have long forgotten, like many QB's who come and go, if he had not been able to learn in the league with the illegal training wheels he had. He throws a nice ball, but a lot of guys do. He had the decision-making, the hard part, done for him. He definitely would have suffered more hits without that help, in essence ending his career earlier, even if he had somehow been able to last on his ability, which I doubt. I know a lot of people have trouble imagining that and usually rebut with laughing or name calling as nobody wants to hear the possibility that the history they think they are witnessing is false, but that is my opinion based on my reading articles, the book and a couple of other sources.