Patriots have become the most distrusted team in sports

Whether the New England Patriots are more champions or cheaters depends on your perspective. And perhaps your accent.

One thing that is indisputable, regardless of rooting interests, is that no NFL team is perceived to cheat as much as New England.

There was Spygate in 2007, Deflategate in last year’s AFC Championship Game and the somewhat humorous Headsetgate to start this season. In a span of eight years, the Patriots have more gates than some small-city airports.

Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy wrote in May, when the league meted out its Deflategate punishments, “In the eyes of the NFL, and much of Football America, the Patriots are Alex Rodriguez.”

Imagine the horror of Patriots fans waking up that morning to read that their beloved team is football’s version of a cheatin’ bleepin’ New York Yankee.

Between first accounts of the deflated footballs and New England’s appearance in Super Bowl XLIX, Public Policy Polling — which takes the pulse of America most often regarding politics and public policy — ventured into the sports world and found that 41 percent of respondents in their survey believed New England had cheated in the AFC title game.

The Patriots also received the league’s lowest favorability rating in the poll, at 30 percent. (The Dallas Cowboys remained the most-hated team in PPP’s survey.)

Both Sports Illustrated and ESPN released results of investigations into the Patriots the week the current NFL regular season kicked off.

Sports Illustrated reported that over the past decade, 19 NFL franchises had taken precautions before playing the Patriots that they did not take before facing other opponents. Those measures include emptying trash cans in hotel meeting rooms, running fake plays during walk-throughs the day before games, posting employees as guards outside locker room doors and checking hotels, lockers and coaches’ booths for listening devices.

SI also found that “multiple” teams approached the Seattle Seahawks before their Super Bowl XLIX meeting with New England to offer tips on how to secure their practice so the Patriots could not spy on them.

New England won the game for its fourth Super Bowl championship in Bill Belichick’s 16 seasons as head coach. For what it’s worth, three of those championships occurred before Spygate. In what could affect the worth of that last fact, ESPN reported in its September magazine that the Patriots filmed opposing coaches’ signals in 40 games, practices and walk-throughs from 2000 to 2007. The Patriots denied the claim.

Matt Dolloff covers all things Boston sports for CBSBostonSports.com. This season, he is writing tongue-in-cheek articles describing how the Patriots cheat their opponents. After New England defeated Buffalo 30-20 in Week 2, for example, he revealed that the Patriots had too many defenders in the Bills’ backfield and would not allow quarterback Tyrod Taylor to attempt many passes.

“There’s no question that the Patriots push the limits of the rules, exploit loopholes and engage in old-school gamesmanship more than most, if not all other teams,” Dolloff said.

But Dolloff believes the main reason for the Patriot-hating around the league comes from the team’s success, much as previously occurred in Boston with Red Auerbach’s Celtics.

“It also doesn’t help the Patriots in the public eye that they often have a defiant attitude toward the league,” Dolloff said. “But common sense dictates that everyone in the league does something that toes the line or crosses it, if only to feel comfortable. Ultimately, what really wins in the NFL is talent, hard work, preparation and execution on the field. Tom Brady’s performance so far this season — with fully inflated footballs — is proof of that.”

Clearly, the Patriots receive more scrutiny than other teams when it pertains to following the rules.

There needs to be a poll to determine how many NFL fans are aware that in March the Atlanta Falcons were fined $350,000 and lost a fifth-round draft pick because they pumped in artificial noise during home games in 2013 and 2014. More attention was paid to the headset problems the Pittsburgh Steelers experienced at New England in the season opener.

The NFL cited a stadium power infrastructure issue as the source of that problem, but Steelers coach Mike Tomlin told reporters that headset issues are “always the case” when playing in the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium. Thus, Headsetgate was hatched and other teams came forward to complain of experiencing suspicious communication issues there.

A month ago, San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Nick Canepa followed up ESPN’s article by reminding that the Chargers had lost to New England in the 2007 AFC Championship Game. Canepa wondered whether that loss had cost the Chargers a Super Bowl victory, or maybe two, and by extension a new stadium that would have prevented current speculation that the team could move to Los Angeles.

“Did the Patriots cheat?” wrote Canepa. “We’ll probably never know. Possible? Absolutely. You have to be incredibly naïve or blinded by the Patriots’ light to believe they didn’t.”

This story was originally published October 6, 2015 at 9:13 PM with the headline "Patriots have become the most distrusted team in sports."