A well-constructed, albeit likely biased website called Your Team Cheats has sprung from the ashes of the Deflategate wreckage. It seeks to identify all the evidence of cheating throughout the history of all the NFL franchises.
Website calls out all NFL teams for cheating amid Deflategate fallout
May 13, 2015 at 3:34AM
The likely bias comes from the paragraph at the top of the site that reads: "So you think there's only one NFL team that cheats? You're wrong. All 32 NFL teams cheat. Yup, even your favorite team is a dirty cheater, but since they are not that good, nobody really cares."
Combined with the fact that the spying, deflating Patriots are only deemed "average" cheaters when everything is added up, one might guess the site is administered by someone who has a tear-stained No. 12 jersey and pronounces chowder in a certain way.
If you are curious, the Vikings earn just two fewer "cheat points" in their history than the Patriots and also are deemed "average" cheaters. Among the purple's most notable cheating history includes allegations of artificial crowd noise piped into the Metrodome.
In the broader picture, the numerous examples listed on the site are a reminder of two things:
• The Broncos are deemed the biggest cheaters in the NFL, while the Jaguars are the cleanest. But yes, indeed, everyone cheats … and the degree is often in the eyes of the beholder (plus the judgment of the league).
• The NFL, like many other leagues, has spent a massive amount of time investigating and doling out punishment for what are best categorized as "integrity of the game" infractions. Indeed, those form many of the biggest scandals of this era and eras past.
Before Deflategate, there was Bountygate (the Saints paying bonuses for injuring or taking out opponents), and before that there was Spygate (the Patriots, again, videotaping opponents illegally), and for all those things the teams were hit with significant penalties.
These scandals stand out in our memories not because we can't fathom that someone would cheat — it's not just all 32 NFL teams who cheat. Basically every human has cheated in one way or another at some point.
They stand out because we can't believe, specifically, that our heroes would cheat and make esteemed records feel tainted (PEDs) … or sometimes because they're just plain absurd (like Deflategate).
Michael Rand
about the writer
Their 28-point lead got trimmed to two late, but they held on in a Western Conference finals rematch that missed an injured Luka Doncic after halftime.
