Mike Pettine Says Patriots Have The Jets Playbooks
NFL.com – The Cleveland Browns‘ defensive playbook is apparently thinner than one might expect, given coach Mike Pettine’s tutelage under the uber-creative Rex Ryan. The lack of girth, Pettine told TheMMQB.com’s Greg A. Bedard, is by design. “I don’t put a lot of graduate-level information in it,” Pettine said. “We know in places like New England, it’s only a matter of time that they somehow mysteriously end up with our playbook.” Teams guard playbooks as if the latter were the nuclear football. Players must return the playbooks before being cut, and nowadays teams can remotely wipe an iPad if a player digitally uploaded a playbook. Still, Pettine told Bedard that at Wes Welker‘s wedding, Tom Brady bragged to former Jets outside linebackers coach Mike Smith (who was Welker’s roommate at Texas Tech) about how the Patriots “may or may not have had possession” of a couple of Jets defensive playbooks. “It didn’t shock me because Rex would give them out like candy anyway,” Pettine said. “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.'” Just to be sure key information doesn’t end up in Foxboro again, Pettine will keep most of the high-level courses out of the original playbooks.
As you can probably expect, the blogosphere and Twitter and whatnot are going bananas over this story. I’m sure right now Jerry Thornton has his first natural, non-Viagra assisted boner since the last time the Jets name popped up since he gets off at the mere mention of their name in the media. Rex giving out playbooks, New England cheating like they usually do, former coaches taking shots at the Jets. Its got it all as far as a story to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Personally I don’t think this is big deal. Anything Jets Pats related always gets over inflated but I would imagine this league is so incestuous and there’s so much constant movement that play books and schemes are always circulating around. I don’t think the difference between the Patriots winning the AFC East a thousand years in a row and the Jets scraping by trying to make the playoffs is that Pats saw a couple of defensive plays ahead of time. Do I like hearing that Rex is passing out play books to people who rub elbows with Belichick? Not particularly. Do I think the Pats are dirty cheaters who always look for an angle like this? Yes I do. But I don’t think this is that unusual of a situation and I don’t think its the reason the Jets aren’t division champs every year. With the secondary the Jets have been trotting out there the past few seasons, it wouldn’t matter if Tom Brady knew what was coming or not. There’s still a lot of work to be done with this franchise before we worry about shit like this.