It’s never going to end. It will never, ever end:

From Day 1 of the Spygate saga in September, the controversy over New England’s illicit videotaping practices has centered on the Patriots’ efforts to steal their opponents’ defensive signals. But the tapes delivered via FedEx to NFL headquarters in New York on Thursday morning also include evidence of an effort by New England to steal offensive signals, which would broaden the extent of the team’s surveillance operation.

It would have to broaden it into some other sport, as Pro Football Talk explains:

[T]here’s no such thing as “offensive signals.” At least there aren’t “offensive signals” in the same sense that there are (or, given the coming use of radio receivers for defensive players, were) “defensive signals.” On defense, the coaches signal in the play to the players on the field. On offense, the play is called into the quarterback via the radio in his helmet.

Presumably, the tape created by Walsh shows the hand signals made by offensive coaches to alert the players on the field, and on the sidelines, to the personnel groupings that would be used, such as two running backs, one tight end, and two wideouts, or two tight ends, one running back, and two receivers.

Here’s how one source explained the process to us: “A play ends and the offensive coaching staff yells out on the sideline and simultaneously puts up a hand signal. Let’s say they want ‘regular’ personnel, which is two backs, two receivers and one tight end. The signal would be something like putting one finger in the air. The coach holds it up, but generally so do the players that are running on the field. The whole world sees it.”

And one group of folks who see it are the advance scouts from other teams who are attending the game for the purposes of, among other things, figuring out the number of fingers that are put in the air for each type of offensive grouping. It’s a simple process, and it’s a code that doesn’t require much effort to crack.

That’s in sharp contrast to the signals used by defensive coaches to call in defensive plays, which entails a level of intricacy that would require Rain Man-style abilities to decipher on the fly. [...]

So there’s really nothing to it. And, as others have pointed out, the rule that the Pats broke relates to taping generally, not to the taping of offensive or defensive signals. Thus, the presence of one tape with “offensive signals” doesn’t constitute the kind of new evidence that will land the team or coach Bill Belichick in a fresh vat of boiling water.

We know that plenty of folks who don’t like the Patriots and/or media figures who want to see a compelling story fill the slow months because now and July hope that some previously undisclosed proof of cheating will emerge. If it does, it most likely won’t come from the Walsh tape with the “offensive signals.”

Maybe they are tapes of coaches “flipping the bird”? In any case, I eagerly await the existance of game film to be held up as evidence that the Patriots are stealing their opponents’ uniform designs, or their secret “snap-the-ball-to-start-the-play” signal, or perhaps their super-top-secret plan to put 11 players on the field. Isn’t it time for Pacman Jones to beat up somebody in a strip club already? The vultures are getting stupid.