Greg Bishop of the NY Times is reporting that eight video tapes that show the New England Patriots recorded play calling signals from five opponents in six games were sent to the NFL.

Matt Walsh who worked for the Pats from 1997 to 2003 handed over the tapes after an agreement was met that indemnifies Walsh from all future legal fees.

The tapes show offensive and defensive signals from opposing coaches. They are from both regular season and playoff games.

Regular-season games against the Miami Dolphins, the Buffalo Bills, the Cleveland Browns and the San Diego Chargers and against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2002 American Football Conference championship game.

The infamous so called “walk though tape” of the Rams before the Super Bowl was not apart of these tapes. Walsh’s lawyer said “Mr. Walsh has never claimed to have a tape of the walk-through.”

The New York Times obtained a list of the Walsh videotapes. The information was later confirmed by Walsh’s lawyer, Michael Levy, from the Washington offices of McKee Nelson.

In this report from the Times these tapes are described as sophisticated because of the angles and the amount of camera’s used. They say the Pittsburgh 2002 AFC Championship game tape was the most extensive showing two camera angles on each play.

Read a ton more at the Times website.

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Giants quarterback Eli Manning was the Honorary Guest Speaker at the National Press Club on C-SPAN today.

Appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, Eli will launch the first nationwide effort to register one million Americans for the National President’s Challenge. The six-week program is designed to help combat obesity by raising levels of physical activity among Americans and creating a competition among participating states led by the nation’s governors.

After speaking on the issue of physical fitness and obesity, Eli was open to questions from the crowd. The crowd actually had some very interesting questions.

Here is a quick recap of a few questions:

On how he got out of the blitz during the Super Bowl…

“That’s a great question. I wish I knew. I really don’t know…and if I did, I don’t know if I could reveal my secret.”

On Tiki Barber…

“I have no regrets, no remorse or anything. Tiki was a tremendous player for the Giants and he got me out of a lot of jams while we were playing.”

On ever regretting not signing with San Diego…

“No regrets. My theory is that once you make a decision, once you believe in something, you never look back, you never doubt yourself, you never think of what if. You make a decision, if you believe in it, it’s what your heart is telling you, then you go at it all the way and you know that it’s the right decision to do. “

On how often he might appear in Bill Belichick’s video collection…

“I do not know. I’m sure there’s a play of David Tyree’s catch and a play of the Super Bowl touchdown to Plaxico Burress that won that game. So, those are the only two that really matter in my book.”

To view the full video (1-hour), head over to the C-SPAN website and check under the Recent Program tab halfway down the page. The video requires RealPlayer to watch.

Some of the questions were shocking. Even to the point as asking what the Redskins need to do to improve for 2008 and comparing a contrasting the Giants ownership to the Redskins ownership, in which Eli avoided both.

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Recently I had the chance to interview Ralph Vacchiano, Giants beat writer since 2001 for the Daily News.

Ralph maintains the Giants blog, ‘The Blue Screen.’

Jared Blank, giantsfootballblog.com: One word to describe the journey of the 2007 Giants?
Ralph Vacchiano: Unbelievable.

JB: How would you rate the city’s/tri-state’s reaction to the Giants compared with ‘86 and ‘90?
RV: I’m not really the best judge of that. I was 16 in ‘86 and I don’t recall the reaction. In ‘90 I was up in Syracuse at school, so I wasn’t around for it. I find it hard to believe the reaction to either of those two were bigger or better. The ‘86 championship was sort of expected. Even the ‘90 one wasn’t completely out of nowhere. This was. No one in their right mind thought in November that this was a Super Bowl team. Very few thought they’d ever beat the Patriots. The reaction was the rare mix of shock and euphoria that you get during those once-in-a-lifetime miracle runs or moments. And while I was in Phoenix for a few days afterwards, I’ve heard the stories of Giants fans pouring out into Times Square, of people honking their horns everywhere or just opening their windows and screaming. It must have been wild back here. Add in the ticker tape parade (which neither the ‘86 nor the ‘90 team got) and the 20,000 or so who then showed up at the stadium for that celebration … well, I find it hard to believe the reaction was anywhere near this during the Giants’ first two championship celebrations.

Read the rest of the interview after the jump.

Read more…

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The New York Post has posted a hilarious parody of Michael Jackson’s hit song “Beat It,” taking aim at Patriots head coach Bill Belichick for the Spygate scandal.

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ProFootballTalk.com is reporting that Sal Paolantonio of ESPN stated that if former Patriots employee Matt Walsh has in possession video of the Rams’ final walk-through practice from Super Bowl XXXVI, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick will be suspended for one full season.

The Patriots have denied they videotaped the practice.

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Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering a hearing to delve into why the NFL hastily destroyed all evidence, including tapes handed over by the Patriots, and what other as-yet-undisclosed material might be out there.

A person of extreme interest to Specter is Matt Walsh, who in conversations with ESPN.com suggested he has information that could be damaging to both the league and the Patriots.

Specter has expressed frustration with a lack of response from the NFL to his Nov. 15 letter inquiring about the league’s investigation. He said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell would eventually be called before the committee to address, among other things, the destruction of the tapes. NFL officials and Patriots employees possibly could be brought before the committee to testify.

Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was asked Friday at his Super Bowl news conference about the New York Times story that indicated Specter’s interest and identified Walsh as a person who might have inside knowledge about the Patriots’ operations.

Belichick said, “It’s a league matter. I don’t know anything about it.”

Update 7:10PM EST - ESPN reports allegations that the New England Patriots filmed the St. Louis Rams walk through before Super Bowl XXXVI.

I really hate this, not because I don’t want to see the Belichick taken to task for his tactics, but because when Spygate first went public, it only served to embolden the coach and the team.

It was if they decided it was them against the world and they would simply destroy teams as if to say, we can trample you into the ground without cheating. They had a chip on their shoulder.

Lets hope this doesn’t provide them with extra motivation on Sunday. You can bet Bill will use this to fire up his team, if he hasn’t already.

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In his column last week, Mike Lopresti of USA Today astutely explains that Tom Coughlin’s upset victory over an undefeated, national championship-caliber Notre Dame team while coach of Boston College in 1993 is evidence that he knows how to prepare and win the big game.

“All the fans and all the media were talking about games in the past,” former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz said on the telephone this week. “I was scared to death of Boston College. You could tell Coughlin was a tough coach. I remember watching him against Penn State — and I have a world of respect for Joe Paterno — and it was like watching twin teams.”

For all the hype surrounding Bill Belichick, and deservedly so, this Giants staff deserves mention too. They’ve been superb. Granted it was 15 years ago, but Notre Dame had just beaten Charlie Ward and number one Florida State and were cruising towards another national championship when that BC team came into South Bend nobodies and left heroes.

Throw in Steve Spagnolo’s experience in helping Jim Johnson and the Eagles’ game plan for the Pats in Super Bowl XXXIX, (where they “held” them to 24 points) and you can bet the team will be prepared to win, unlike the team’s last appearance in 2000. To steal a quote from former GM Ernie Accorsi about the team’s game plan heading into that 2000 game.

“In my opinion, we never competed in the 2000 Super Bowl against Baltimore. I would love to criticize our offensive game plan, but I don’t know if we had one.”

This year is sure to be different.

If you’re a true Giant fan haven’t read “The GM” by Tom Callahan there’s still time before Sunday. It will give you chills. It makes us really like the Giants this weekend.

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