Former Penn State offensive lineman Landon Tengwall shared a story on X regarding Spygate from his father-in-law, Kenny Jackson, who was the Steelers wide receivers coach from 2001-2003.
The Steelers lost to the New England Patriots , 24-17, in the AFC Championship Game in the 2001-2002 season. The first of the Steelers' two losses to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game during Spygate, the other coming in 2004.
"My father-in-law always talks about Spygate. He was the Wide Receivers coach for the Steelers in 2002, the year they lost to the Patriots in the AFC Championship game," Tengwall wrote. "He told me he took the game film to Hawaii with him (the staff that lost the conference championship coached their conference in the Pro Bowl) and locked himself in his room to review it obsessively. He couldn't figure out why it seemed like the Patriots knew exactly what the Steelers were doing on offense, and said it drove him nuts. Needless to say, he felt vindicated when the Spygate news broke. To quote, 'Those cheating sons of bitches.'"
The Spygate scandal has come up again, as former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is not a first-ballot Hall of Famer, per Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta Jr. Belichick fell short of the 40 out of 50 votes needed for induction to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
Many were shocked and outraged over Belichick being snubbed. Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson wrote on X , "I would like to know the names of the assholes who did not vote for him..they are too cowardly to identify themselves…"
Spygate and Deflategate are speculated as the main factors to keeping Belichick out of the Hall in his first year of eligibility.
Former Steelers head coach Bill Cowher came up short against Belichick's Patriots in the 2001 and 2004 AFC Championship Game. Despite Spygate, Cowher has always defended Belichick.
While many former Steelers players disagree, Cowher thinks the Patriots just out-played the Steelers in the AFC Championship Games.
"It's only cheating if you get caught," Cowher told The Athletic's Ed Bouchette in 2021 . "Like any player, if you're going to hold him, don't get caught. If you get caught you're wrong, if you don't you're right. I always thought we never lost the games to New England because of Spygate. If he got the calls because we didn't do a very good job of making sure we signaled those in, that's on us, it's not on him. Because we're always looking for competitive edges. I think as any coach whether it's someone's stance, someone's split, someone's formation. You're looking at someone's eyes, how are they coming out of a huddle? You're always looking for those little things that give you a competitive edge and that to me is what that was."
That mutual respect goes both ways. Belichick praised Cowher when he got inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021 as a member of the Class of 2020.
"Bill had a tremendous NFL career that encompassed a lot – player, assistant coach, coordinator and head coach. He was a great defensive coach. Schematically his teams were one of the very best over the course of two decades," Belichick said . "Our teams had some fiercely competitive battles that made me a better coach. I admire and learned from his complete mastery of coaching essentials – motivation, strategy, fundamentals and physical play. Bill and I have been close friends for 35 years and I couldn't be happier for him."
Cowher and Belichick go way back. It was revealed in Cowher's "A Football Life" episode that he and Belichick spent an entire day at Giants Stadium in the late 1980s going over defensive schematics. Cowher was the Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator at the time, while Belichick was the Giants DC.
"For two years, '89 and '90, we were both coordinators, and we shared information back and forth a little bit. Not often, but periodically, and we got to know each other," Cowher said in his "A Football Life" episode.
Tuesday marked the 24-year anniversary of the Patriots' upset over the Steelers in the 2001 AFC Championship Game. New England was 10-point underdogs.
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now : New Spygate Story Emerges from Steelers-Patriots 2001 AFC Championship Game
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