No Surprise: The Denver Media is Playing the SpyGate Card and Saying Belichick Isn't as Nice as John Fox

Denver Post – New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick is a grumpy genius. He’s Gru, the super villain from “Despicable Me.” … During the past week, media cartoonists have drawn Belichick in even more ridiculous colors. The Wall Street Journal reported Coach Hoodie smiled only seven times during 16 postgame interviews this season. Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher… declared him the best coach in league history.  And so, the myth goes…  Here’s what I don’t get: If cyclist Lance Armstrong has been exiled as a shameless cheater and home run king Barry Bonds feels the wrath from 65 percent of indignant Hall of Fame voters, why is Belichick celebrated despite Spygate, which accused his Patriots of stealing defensive signals from the New York Jets?…

In the win-or-be-eaten-alive-by-Twitter world of the NFL, [John] Fox dares to show players and fans alike a little piece of his heart. Belichick would rather show the unwashed masses his disdainful arrogance. This does not necessarily mean Fox is a better person than Belichick. But it might help to explain why Fox’s heart broke during the team’s bye week and he had to be rushed to the hospital for repairs. Could it be that Uncle Foxy takes everything in the NFL to heart, while Coach Hoodie drops his football problems at the curb for the garbage man? There’s no way of me knowing for certain. Maybe you should ask New England linebacker Brandon Spikes, hurt and feeling abandoned in the Patriots’ run to the Super Bowl. At age 32 and with more brutal blows to the head than he would care to remember, Wes Welker isn’t the receiver he used to be. Belichick let Welker walk from New England. Fox took Welker off the street and made him feel wanted in Denver.

I didn’t really need to include that last paragraph because it’s kind of off topic.  But I couldn’t help myself because it could quite possibly be the worst piece of sportswriting ever published.  Seriously, it makes the worst claptrap Dan Shaughnessy ever came up with sound like the best of Dan Jenkins.  Now I feel like I owe Shank an apology (note: no I don’t).  John Fox’s heart broke because he loves his players and fans so much and he took that poor, orphaned urchin Wes Welker off the streets and gave him a place to stay (and 2 years, $12 million)?  Stupid me.  I thought Fox’s heart broke due to dangerously high levels of Low Density Lipoproteins, but what do I know?  I’m dumb enough to think a coach’s job is to try to win Super Bowls, not worry about the condition of Welker’s head or Brandon Spikes’ hurt and feeling of abandonment.

But I digress.  The real point of this is that once again, here we’ve got another podunk, jerkwater NFL city that can’t process how the Patriots manage to stay in contention year after year after incredible year.  So what do they do?  They pull SpyGate off the shelf, despite the fact it went past it’s expiration date six bloody football seasons ago.  But that’s all they got.  They can’t fathom how any team could still be standing in spite of everything the Pats have had to overcome.  So rather than talk about how remarkable it is that they’ve survived Hernandez and all the injuries and the horrendous calls that cost them two games at the end and Brady’s “declining skills,” these other podunk jerkwater sports markets have to bring up the most overrated “scandal” of all time.

Funny how the hack who wrote this conveniently forgets about the Broncos’ own, real scandal, which was ten times worse.  How they got caught violating the salary cap to the tune of $29 million.  The one where the league took a draft pick away and fined them almost a million bucks.  That would be the same scandal that had Al Davis calling for an asterisk for their two Super Bowls and a suspension for their owner.  Without those salary cap violations, the owner and GM John Elway would have zero Super Bowls, as God intended.  That is real cheating on a major scale.  Not just some low level assistant pointing a camera at a sidelines.  But I guess all is forgiven when 15 years later you hire a head coach who feels feelings until his big, sensitive heart breaks.  @JerryThornton1

[Thanks to @PatriotsXVLIII]