Paranoia running rampant among NFL coaches By Jarrett Bell, USA TODAY Given the revelations last week that resulted in unprecedented punishment for the New England Patriots' three-time Super Bowl-winning coach, Bill Belichick -- who violated NFL policy by ordering videotape surveillance of New York Jets coaches sending signals from the sideline during the regular-season opener -- perhaps there's good reason for the worry. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell fined Belichick $500,000 and docked the Patriots $250,000 in addition to their first-round pick in the 2008 NFL draft (or their second- and third-round choices if the team doesn't qualify for the playoffs this season) to send a strong message regarding cheating. "Ways of getting other people's signals has been part of the game, (usually with) the advance scouts getting it with binoculars," St. Louis Rams coach Scott Linehan said Monday. "You have guys who can sit up in the booth, and they are real good about catching that. A lot of people hide it, so it's really hard to pick up. That's the gamesmanship. "When you start getting into the electronic part, as far as filming them, that's a little different." Goodell said he will monitor actions of all 32 NFL teams to ensure a level playing field and reserves the right to punish the Patriots further if more wrongdoing is uncovered. Belichick said he will comply with the commissioner's request to turn over videotapes that might give the Patriots an advantage. The crackdown might also amplify why suspicion that opponents are constantly watching, plotting, maneuvering to gain an edge in an ultra-competitive environment strikes to the marrow of many coaches. "One of my favorite sayings is, 'Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean you're not really after me,' " Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick said in an interview before the Belichick scandal surfaced. "It's a very proprietary league. Everybody worries about the information that they have. Everybody wants everything to be a secret. "What's semi-comical is how transparent the league is. We're all kind of doing the same thing when it comes right down to it. Just talk to a player that has been on two or three teams." The subject was once broached with Trent Dilfer, who was Billick's quarterback with the Ravens for their Super Bowl XXXV victory and is with his fifth NFL team, the San Francisco 49ers. Dilfer said that of the paranoia weaved throughout the fabric of the NFL, the mistrust that players carry pales compared to that of coaches -- especially those using forms of the West Coast offense made famous by former 49ers coach Bill Walsh and carried forward by many of his former assistants and their coaching progeny. "As a group, the whole West Coast (system) group, with their playbook, is highly paranoid," said Dilfer, a 14-year veteran who also had stops with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Seattle Seahawks and Cleveland Browns. "That playbook, if they could, they'd have heat sensors on it and they'd be able to track where it was. "Little do they know, I have Xerox copies of every playbook I've ever owned." Secrets leave with assistants Dilfer's former boss, Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren, said last year that he became less paranoid over the years as several of Holmgren's former assistants became head coaches. Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid, Tampa Bay's Jon Gruden and the Buffalo Bills' Dick Jauron have worked for Holmgren, as have former NFL head coaches Steve Mariucci and Ray Rhodes. Similar ties crisscross the league, including Jets coach Eric Mangini having worked for Belichick. Says Holmgren: "I don't think there are very many secrets anymore. But it's not just the playbook. It's the system, a way of doing things. ... It's the whole thing." Holmgren, though, still covers his mouth with his laminated play-calling sheet when he speaks into his headset and calls plays. This is partly due to eyesight. "Then the other thing," he adds, "is if somebody's looking." A few years ago, Holmgren watched a game on television coached by a former assistant and deciphered the play-calls. After that he covered up on the sideline. "I saw Andy or Gruden on television, and (as) he was calling the plays, I was reading his lips," Holmgren said. "I read everything." Still, Holmgren knows his paranoia is nowhere near that of George Seifert, his former boss with the 49ers. During the early 1990s, a jogger was once checked out by police on a bridge that overlooked the 49ers practice field. Apparently the man stopped to tie his shoe. "George, you could put him over there" in terms of paranoia about spying, Holmgren said, extending an arm, "and the rest of us are over here." The idea that some team's practices could be ripe for spying isn't far-fetched, given their location. For roughly 10 years, the San Diego Chargers have practiced at a city-owned site in a valley that sits beneath a steep hill. Two office buildings -- one a San Diego County Sheriff's Department headquarters, the other housing private businesses -- sit atop the hill. Last week, after news broke of the allegations about the Patriots, Chargers all-pro linebacker Shawne Merriman gazed at the hill and allowed his imagination to wander. "I'm just looking up there," Merriman said with a nod. "There could be a guy watching us from the bushes, with a clear shot of everything we're doing." Merriman said he wouldn't be surprised to learn that spying is more widespread than what was uncovered in the Patriots case. "There's so much technology now," he said. "I mean, anyone who has a camera phone now is paparazzi. You'd have to be pretty blind to think something like that doesn't happen in the league. I don't know what's going on with the Patriots, but I'm sure it happens." Tight rein on media If there's any coach in the NFL who might be uneasy about his surroundings, a case can be made for Romeo Crennel. The Cleveland Browns headquarters, nestled in a residential neighborhood, is bordered on one side by several two-story houses with intimate views of the practice fields. Shortly after he became coach in 2005, Crennel was asked about the proximity of the houses. "I don't consider myself paranoid at this point," he said. "Now I might become paranoid." Coaches such as Crennel always worry that strategy, such as a trick play, could be exposed. "I know that in the history of this game, one way people got information was to send a spy to practice and take notes and film," said Crennel, who was an assistant with Belichick under Bill Parcells with the New York Giants in the 1990s. "At the Giants, we always joked about the hotel across the (freeway). It was a high-rise, and you could look right down onto our practice field. We said there were teams that had someone in that hotel watching and filming everything we did." Teams vary in allowing media access at practices, which traditionally has fueled coaches' mistrust. Generally, teams with "open" practices ask media not to report on strategy. Many teams close practices before team drills begin, and it's standard for those left open to allow video and still photography for only a few minutes. Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs beefed up security at Redskins Park after returning from an 11-year absence in 2004. He bars national media from some practices that are open only to local media -- and even those outlets are restricted in the number of representatives allowed to watch. And he has conducted unannounced practices at a local high school. Gibbs insists he isn't paranoid. "You just want to be smart and protect yourself as best as you can," he said. Is it true that Gibbs has personally emptied trash cans -- not trusting janitors for the task -- with scraps of X's and O's from the offices of assistant coaches at night? "Doesn't everybody do that?" he said with a hint of sarcasm. Gibbs has a clear vision of what he's protecting from opponents. "I think you can learn a lot," he said. "If you knew what a team was going to do against you, there are so many things you could do." Former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson recalled gaining an edge before Super Bowl XXVIII, although he contends there was no foul play involved. Johnson said he and several assistants were watching a TV report and as the reporter spoke from the Bills practice they noticed in the background that Jim Kelly was practicing shuttle passes to Thurman Thomas. Johnson said he asked then-coordinator Butch Davis to research the Bills' use of the short flip passes. Davis reviewed video and discovered the Bills had not used the play since that preseason. "I told Butch," Johnson recalled, " 'I guarantee you they're going to run the shuttle.' " Sure enough, Johnson said, the Bills ran the play three times in the Super Bowl. Twice the play lost yardage. The next time, Leon Lett forced a fumble that James Washington returned for a touchdown. "What might look really innocent to a cameraman or a layman," Johnson said, "to the opposing team might look like a lot more." In an interview conducted before the Belichick scandal surfaced, Johnson said he thought pro and college coaches long demonstrated a propensity to steal signals. In what now seemed prophetic, or very informed, Johnson described one method: having a video camera operator record signals from coaches on the sideline, to later match up with video from the game to provide a key. "Ninety percent of the coaches in the league are paranoid because they've done something themselves," Johnson said. "They have some kind of skullduggery. "It must be worth it. Hey, one play can win a game." Listening in In a memo sent Sept. 6, 2006, NFL vice president Ray Anderson emphasized to coaches that videotaping opponents' signals from anywhere in the stadium was prohibited. Although the NFL's competition committee has discussed such tactics, there have been no amendments to the rule in recent years. NFL owners failed to adopt a proposal last spring to allow for helmet radio communication between coaches and defensive players similar to coach-quarterback communication, which would eliminate the need for hand signals by defensive coaches. The measure fell two votes shy of the three-fourths needed for passage (22-10). Former Houston Texans general manager Charley Casserly, now an analyst for CBS' The NFL Today, served on the competition committee for years. He said another tactic uncovered was teams concealing microphones on defensive linemen to record signals from quarterbacks. By matching the audio to game tapes, teams might gather audibles that could be useful in future matchups. Also, Goodell said during an interview Sunday on NBC's Football Night in America that he would look into rumors involving malfunctions of coach-quarterback radio communications around the league. With teams apparently willing to go to such lengths for an advantage, perhaps the paranoia coaches exhibit is essential. "You'd be careless not to think there's going to be people trying to do anything they can to gain a competitive edge," Linehan says. "That's the way it is." Says Billick: "I can't tell you how many different players, when they come to our organization, will say, 'Well, do you want my old playbook?' It would be interesting to look at, but I don't know what I'd do with it. ... Now a game plan, that would be different. You could garner a few things." Game plans are playbook inserts doled out on a weekly basis and required to be returned. They are then disposed of -- with a shredder. Knowing coaches, the shredded paper is probably burned. "Am I paranoid? Maybe I'm just naive," Billick says. "I think you can take paranoia to the extreme. But I'm going to speak out of both sides of my mouth. I do worry. "I'm always telling my players, 'Guys, no one really needs to know what we're doing. What goes on in these meetings, you don't need to explain it. I don't care if it's your wife, girlfriend, parents. ... Everybody wants to be in the know. Maybe I'm too stupid to know that people are skunking us all the time."