Playoffs
Hall of Fame
Marshall Faulk: 'I'll never be over being cheated out of Super Bowl'
NEW ORLEANS -- The Super Bowl is back in New Orleans for the first time since February 2002, when the Patriots upset the mighty St. Louis Rams.
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"Am I over the loss? Yeah, I'm over the loss. But I'll never be over being cheated out of the Super Bowl. That's a different story. I can understand losing a Super Bowl, that's fine . . . But how things happened and what took place. Obviously, the commissioner gets to handle things how he wants to handle them but if they wanted us to shut up about what happened, show us the tapes. Don't burn 'em."
Faulk was referring to tapes the Patriots had of opposing coaches sending in defensive signals. It's a story from another epoch, to be sure, but as Faulk spoke, it became obvious the scab is still there. And with just a scratch to the surface, Faulk was soon rolling downhill in accusing the Patriots of having taped the Rams' walkthrough prior to Super Bowl XXXVI.
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"I understand Bill (Belichick) is a great coach," said Faulk. "But No. 13 (Kurt Warner) will tell you. Mike Martz will tell you. We had some plays in the red zone that we hadn't ran. I think we got to fourth down -- we ran three plays that we hadn't ran, that Mike drew up for that game -- Bill's a helluva coach . . . we hadn't ran them the whole year (and the Patriots were ready for them)."
Faulk said the only time those plays were practiced were at the walkthrough.
"I know, in that game, in the red zone, the plays we ran, most of them we hadn't ran most of those plays that year," Faulk noted. "And a couple of plays on third down that we walked through also . . . Any time that I was offset, I was always stationary. And we had creating motioning in the backfield at the same depth on the other side of the field. And they created a check for it. It's just little things like that. It's either the best coaching in the world when you come up with situations that you had never seen before. Or you'd seen it and knew what to do."
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In April of 2008, Goodell explained his findings and decision to destroy the tapes he'd confiscated.
"The reason I destroyed the tapes is they were totally consistent with what the team[] told me," Goodell said during his State of the NFL speech at the NFL OwnerPatriotss Meetings. "It was the appropriate thing to do and I think it sent a message.