Kovacevic: Filthy Patriots flip off football world

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- The Steelers were sloppy, sluggish, disorganized and outright dumb in losing their season opener to the Super Bowl champion Patriots, 28-21, Thursday night at Gillette Stadium.

And I would say that's being too kind, except that Mike Tomlin was way too kind afterward: "I thought it was a little bit closer than the score might have indicated."

I couldn't disagree more, and I'll detail precisely why in a bit.

For the moment, though, I just want it on record -- and hey, bold-face, underline and add endless emojis for emphasis if that's your thing -- that New England won on merit, and that the Steelers should have no excuses for their own performance.

We clear on that?

Good, because unfortunately there's this, too: The Patriots didn't win fair and square.

They cheated.

Again.



At least they did according to some serious suggestions from Tomlin afterward that it was no accident that the Steelers' coaches were unable to radio each other for the better part of the first half. He said all they could pick up, bizarrely, was the Patriots' local radio broadcast. He added that it's "always the case ... here," referring to Foxborough.

Watch the video for yourself, as I ask about an early set of defensive breakdowns, and it leads to further questioning about the radio issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIuG7BpRf4k

To offer context here: Tomlin doesn't do this sort of thing. Even when he's caught directly in a controversy, he'll go out of his way to dismiss it with some that's-between-us-and-so-and-so statement.

You can see up there that this infuriated him.

And if not, it was clear on the field when he fumed at officials, angrily waving his headset at referee Carl Cheffers in an attempt to get the NFL's attention. Before long, league security chief Jeff Miller was along the sideline asking questions. So did Blake Jones, the NFL's director of football operations, who left the press box to see if he could help.

All while the game proceeded, of course.

And all while the Patriots, by a quirk in the rule that both teams must remove their headsets when either team faces a total outage, weren't forced to remove theirs because this wasn't a total outage. As Tomlin acknowledged, the Steelers' outage affected only "coach-to-coach" communications, not those with signal-callers Ben Roethlisberger and Lawrence Timmons on the field.

If you think about it, it's brilliant, right?

And it's so very Bill Belichick and so very Patriots, especially when one recalls that this precise practice was outlined in the bombshell ESPN report earlier this week.

Oh, there's no immediate evidence of wrongdoing, mind you, and there surely won't be. That's also very Belichick, very Patriots. Nothing is left to chance, from the stomped videotapes of Spygate to Tom Brady's smashed cellphone. These guys are the best -- and, I guess, the worst -- at what they do.

It gets better. Or worse.

The written account of the incident on the Steelers' official site offers this stunning bit of information: "Strangely enough, whenever an NFL representative proceeded to the New England sideline to shut down their headsets, the Steelers' headsets cleared. Then, as the representative walked away from the New England sideline, the Steelers’ headsets again started to receive the Patriots game broadcast."

The Steelers are not expected to file a formal complaint with the league. That would have had about as much chance of getting action as we have of populating Pluto by next summer.

Even when something done by the Patriots does come to light, Roger Goodell's NFL invariably speeds to the rescue, as it did on this night with this statement from Michael Signora, the league's vice president of communications: "In the first quarter of tonight's game, the Pittsburgh coaches experienced interference in their headsets caused by a stadium power infrastructure issue, which was exacerbated by inclement weather. The coaches' communications equipment, including headsets, is provided by the NFL for both clubs use on game day. Once the power issue was addressed, the equipment functioned properly with no additional issues."

I swear, this came from the league and not from The Onion. But that didn't make it any less satirical-sounding or hilarious.

Because if you break it down, we're supposed to believe that, within the span of an hour or two, someone was able to deduce why, in a stadium with 70,000-plus people that's flooded with limitless wifi and all manner of communication, one team's headsets -- no, just the coaches of one team! -- were listening to the Patriots' radio broadcast. Also, we're to accept that somehow, this light, steady rain that had been taking place all day suddenly manifested itself into some mystical, magical force that affected only this one tiny target.

Wow!