A team source confirmed to Ben Volin of the Boston Globe that the Patriots suspended Dave Mondillo, a longtime employee of Kraft Sports and Entertainment, for filming the Bengals’ sideline last week. The Patriots had reached out to the Browns for a video credential to film one of their advance scouts for an installment of the team’s “Do Your Job” series, in which various personnel executives, coaches, and scouts are profiled. The credential was granted for the Week 14 Browns-Bengals game, and it just so happened that the Bengals were New England’s Week 15 opponent. Neither the Bengals nor the NFL was made aware. The league is currently investigating.
On Sunday, FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer showed leaked video from Mondillio in which Mondillo is confronted by a member of the Bengals’ security team.
He broke the original Spy Gate story in 2007, and now @JayGlazer comes through again with EXCLUSIVE footage of Spy Gate II.pic.twitter.com/4o69oV2Lcc
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) December 15, 2019
“You’re filming a piece on your advance scout?” the Bengals security representative asks at one point.
“Yeah,” Mondillo responds.
“Yeah? Come on, guys,” is the security response as the video shows the sideline. “I don’t see the advance scout in the footage.”
Mondillo responds that he’s trying to get some field perspective, and the counter is that he’s not filming the field — the shot is still to the sideline.
Mondillo then offers to delete the footage, saying he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong, to which the Bengals employee responds with a laugh, “The damage is done, my friend.”
That’s most likely true. Whether Mondillo knew what he was doing or not, the Patriots should have made sure he knew exactly what he was allowed to film, and what he was not allowed to film. At the very least, a team employee should have been with the crew at the location to make sure everything was on the up-and-up.
Because even if it was completely aboveboard and normal, this was always going to have an odd look. The Patriots have their own obvious and well-documented history with illegal video. The “Spygate” scandal, in which the Patriots were busted for videotaping the Jets’ defensive coaches’ signals during a 2007 game, is the most recent iteration of the team’s violations of the NFL’s rules regarding these things. Bill Belichick was fined $500,000, the Patriots were fined $250,000, and the team was stripped of its first-round pick in the 2008 draft.
On Monday, the team released a statement on its website, in which the team confirmed the nature of the “Do Your Job” project.
Then, the Patriots admitted that the production crew “without specific knowledge of League rules – inappropriately filmed the field from the press box. The sole purpose of the filming was to provide an illustration of an advance scout at work on the road. There was no intention of using the footage for any other purpose. We understand and acknowledge that our video crew, which included independent contractors who shot the video, unknowingly violated a league policy by filming the field and sideline from the press box. When questioned, the crew immediately turned over all footage to the league and cooperated fully.”
The statement then went on to say that the production crew was independent of the team’s football operations, and that while a Patriots scout was being profiled, the team’s staff “had no other involvement whatsoever in the planning, filming or creative decisions made during the production of these features.”
“We accept full responsibility for the actions of our production crew at the Browns-Bengals game,” the statement concluded.
“I mean, I had no idea what it was about,” Belichick said on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. “Then, you know, I got an explanation. I think the organization released that explanation or something similar to that. That’s really all I know about it.
“I’m really focused on getting ready for the Bengals here. I just think all that’s being handled internally or however it’s being handled. I don’t know. Again, I have no involvement in this and no knowledge of it. I really don’t have any idea what exactly is going on. I can tell you that we’ve never, as a coaching staff, and I’ve personally have never used any video footage at all of anything that those production people have done, other than what’s shown on public television or something like that. We don’t have anything to do with what they do, so I really don’t have much knowledge of the situation at all.”
Had this happened to any other team, one could take the statements at face value and move on. But this is the Patriots, so there were going to be legitimate questions about it.
The leaked video, and the suspension, will simply add to the weight of those questions.