Monday Night Football: Mike McCarthy Stealing Signs
Unless Aaron Rodgers or Randall Cobb is on your fantasy team this year, Patriots fans probably didn’t have a whole lot of reasons to watch Monday Night Football this week.
Ah, who are we kidding? It’s football, and Monday sucks anyway. Of course you watched it.
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In between Aaron Rodgers slicing and dicing the Kansas City Chiefs for 333 passing yards and five touchdown passes, though, Patriots fans might have noticed Monday Night Football hosts Jon Gruden and Mike Tirico talking about a curious subject: Packers coach Mike McCarthy stealing signs.
No, really: Gruden and Tirico started joking around in the third quarter of Monday Night Football about how Mike McCarthy, in his days with the Kansas City Chiefs, would watch opposing coordinators’ hand signals from the booth and attempt to decode them to other team employees in the press box.
Jon Gruden was on the Packers staff at the time, and outright said that McCarthy stole his signals. They even went as far as to show an old video of Mike McCarthy in his tomato-red Chiefs gear, raising a piece of paper over his mouth as he speaks, during a game.
(It’s also worth noting that McCarthy rocked a pretty sweet ‘stache at the time. But so did a lot of people in 1993, I guess.)
Where this gets really entertaining, though, is that Gruden and Tirico are laughing and joking about how McCarthy was well-known around the league for signal-stealing, and the tone is “Oh, Mike, you RASCAL! You used to do this ALL THE TIME, remember? And right out where everyone could see it! LOLOL! Good times.”
*high five*
And then, after a few minutes of that, everyone had a good chuckle, and the Chiefs sort of tried to start a comeback after (presumably) realizing they were down by approximately a zillion points in the fourth quarter.
Naturally, it dawned on a few people watching the game that, hey, wait a second, signal-stealing is supposedly the unholiest of all evils and should be punishable by the harshest punishment ever dealt by the NFL, right?
This guy noticed:
I find it funny that Jon Gruden is openly talking about McCarthy stealing signals like its no big deal. Because it isn't a big deal. #NFL
— Justin Lafleur (@JustLafleur) September 29, 2015
Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media Watch noticed:
Jon Gruden talking about Mike McCarthy stealing his signals Gruden was with Packers and McCarthy with Chiefs. Hilarity ensued.
— Bruce Allen (@bruceallen) September 29, 2015
We noticed:
Jon Gruden & Tirico laughing it up on #MondayNightFootball about stealing signals...apparently it's only a travesty when the Patriots do it.
— C&C Podcast (@RealCCPodcast) September 29, 2015
And a certain former Patriots pass-rusher with three Super Bowl rings that happens to be employed as an analyst for the NFL Network also just happened to notice:
I love the xo john gruden and mike tirico just did of mike macarthy stealing signals n 1993 from the booth so nobody does it huh lol
— Willie McGinest (@WillieMcGinest) September 29, 2015
Then again, it sure isn’t the first time sign-stealing has been laughed at, unless New England is involved. There sure seems to be a double-standard here, but what do I know?
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