In a conversation that will never end, a former New England Patriots player is firing back at James Harrison over cheating allegations from the Spygate era. Reacting to Harrison’s recent comments on his own podcast, Asante Samuel Sr. told Harrison to stop crying over spilt milk.
“James Deebo Harrison, reminiscing about old times and what could’ve, should’ve been if we didn’t know their plans,” Samuel said on the Say What Needs To Be Said podcast. “Yes, James Harrison is crying. Big Deebo. He’s crying about the AFC Championship. He’s talking about us, the Patriots, whooping the Steelers in the 2004 AFC Championship Game.”
Samuel’s commentary comes in response to Harrison outlining his belief that cheating kept Pittsburgh from making the Super Bowl in Ben Roethlisberger’s historic rookie season. Harrison noted that the Steelers had the upper hand in the regular-season matchup but were one step behind New England in the playoff rematch with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. A game the Steelers lost 41-27.
“It sounds like we had better coaching than you, brother,” Samuel said, denying the cheating allegations. “It sounds like y’all was outcoached. And it’s so sad to hear you cry about it now.”
Harrison is hardly the only Steeler to make these claims. The crux of Spygate is that the Patriots illegally videotaped signals during games. While teams have and continue to try to crack the code over signals and calls, New England went the extra steps of capturing them on video from hidden sections of the stadium. Later, those signals would be mapped to the play calls to crack the code for future matchups. The notion being that when New England played Pittsburgh in the rematch, it knew exactly what was being called into the huddle.
Samuel has a different version of events.
“Because they beat us in the regular season and we whooped them 41-27 in the AFC Championship, James Harrison thinks we cheated,” he said. “Why is James Harrison acting like it’s not super hard to beat a team twice. We all know that in the NFL, it is super hard to beat a team twice.”
On principle, that point is fair. The team that wins the first outing has to decide whether to make adjustments or stick with what worked. The losing team has the easier choice to correct mistakes and bounce back. Still, the allegations against the Patriots during that time are strong and the league punished them for breaking the rules (and then destroyed all the tapes, perhaps most sinister of all).
The Steelers claim guilt. The Patriots claim innocence. No side is changing their opinion 20 years later. And New England will keep its Super Bowl trophy. The only consolation for Harrison is his Steelers won it all the following season and again in 2008, avoiding the Patriots in both Super Bowl runs.
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