Belichick

Bill Belichick had a lot more to say about Matt Walsh and the New England Patriots’ taping scandal than was shown Friday on the CBS Evening News.

An extended interview posted on the network’s Web site has Belichick saying Walsh embellished or changed his stories on more than one occasion. The coach stressed that the videotaping of defensive signals was done in plain sight, and only to give his scouting staff a more convenient way to try and decipher those signals.

At the outset, reporter Armen Keteyian asks Belichick for his general thoughts on Walsh’s comments; last Tuesday, the former video assistant met with both NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to discuss his duties with the Patriots.

“I’m not really sure where to start,” Belichick said. “More than one person told me that he said, after Super Bowl XXXVI, that he had videotaped the Rams’ walk-through practice. Now that story has changed. It seems like he has an agenda. I’m not really sure; I don’t know.”

Walsh told Goodell and Specter that he did not videotape the Rams’ walk-through, did not know of someone else who had, and had not seen a tape of the walkthrough.

“He’s changed a lot of things he’s said. Whatever his testimony was to the league, most recently, that is kind of the latest version of it,” Belichick said.

Belichick reiterated where he went wrong with the taping, by not going to the league after a memo was circulated to all teams before the start of the 2006 season and checking as to whether what his team was doing was against the rule.

Keteyian asked Belichick to detail what was done with the tapes after Walsh handed them to Ernie Adams, the team’s director of football research.

“He looked at them and it was, again, [it was part of] a mosaic (that goes into game planning). It was compiled, it was put in together with a lot of other information about what the team did, and our preparation for the game,” Belichick said. “Ernie looked at them. At times there was some information that came out of it, and he used it. That’s how it was done. It was one part of…hundreds of things that are put into preparation and game-planning.”

While Walsh has indicated that the cheating is a big part of the reason why New England has won three Super Bowls since the 2001 season, Belichick said there’s not always that much to be gleaned from the signals.

“You can’t take advantage of signals,” he said. “You don’t know whether they are ever going to be available or not. [Teams] can change them. They can use wristbands. They can have somebody stand in front of the person that is signaling them. We’re always protective of our signals. We change them on a regular basis. We protect them, just like a third-base coach does. I think most teams in the league do that.”

Belichick said “anyone” can sit in the press box in a stadium and look for the signals, and the tapes were a more convenient way to study them.

At the end, Belichick was asked if there was anything further he wanted to add.

“I think that the players and the assistant coaches have no involvement in this whatsoever. For them to be dragged in or questioned at all on it is totally out of the scope and the realm of what this is about. I think our players and our assistant coaches work hard and they prepare hard, and they go out and do their best to win. That’s why I respect them. That’s why they’ve done as well as they have,” Belichick said.

“On a going-forward basis, I think what we’ve taken from this as an organization is that we have learned from the problems we had in the fall. We’ve looked at really every single area of our operation. We’ve tried to tighten it down. We’ve tightened down our accountability. We’ve streamlined some things. We are certainly taking the extra step in every situation that we can, to make sure we are in full, complete compliance with everything we have to do, at every level. There is more communication, there is better understanding, and we’re making sure everything is done in a totally proper and consistent way with what the league expects to be done.

“I think that has strengthened our organization and certainly Robert and Jonathan Kraft have gone a long way to not only supporting me and the football team, but also making sure that going forward, we’re in complete compliance with everything we need to be doing.”

To see the entire 14 minute, 40 second video, go to www.cbsnews.com

smanza@projo.com