FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Is Bill Beli-cheat back in business?
If you listened to Ravens coach John Harbaugh after Saturday's 35-31 Patriots win Saturday, it sure sounded like he thought so.
Harbaugh was upset with a tactic Belichick used in the third quarter that he called both "illegal" and deceptive. It appears Harbaugh has a point about it being deceptive, but not really illegal.
The controversy is over a formation the Patriots used on three plays that had just four offensive linemen and a back split out declaring himself ineligible.
"It's not something that anybody has ever done before," Harbaugh said. "They're an illegal type of a thing and I'm sure that [the NFL will] make some adjustments and things like that."
The formation confused the Ravens, who did not have time to figure out which receiver to leave uncovered because the referee would announce the ineligible player, and quarterback Tom Brady would snap the ball seconds later.
"We wanted an opportunity to be able to ID who the eligible players were," Harbaugh said, "because what they were doing was they would announce the eligible player and then time was taken and they would go over and snap the ball before we even had the chance to figure out who was lined up where, and that was the deception part of it. And that was where it was clearly deception."
On the third time the Patriots used the formation, Shane Vereen was the ineligible receiver lined up in the slot to Brady's right. Tight end Michael Hoomanawanui was lined up where the left tackle normally would be, so he was a bit hidden to Ravens defenders. Brady hit Hoomanawanui for a 14-yard gain and Harbaugh lost it. He walked onto the field to yell at the referee. Harbaugh was hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, but he got the officials' attention.
"They didn't really understand what was happening," Harbaugh said of the officials. "That's why I had to go and take the penalty to get their attention, so that they would understand what was going on because they didn't understand what was going on. And they said that that was the right thing, that they'd give us the chance to ID the eligible receivers so we could actually get them covered. That's why guys were open, because we didn't ID where the eligible receivers were at. So that's the nature of that particular thing they were doing, that's what made it so difficult."
Harbaugh would not answer when asked if he considered the formation "cheap or dirty." Brady clearly felt the alignment was above board.
"Maybe those guys [should] go to study the rule book and figure it out," Brady said. "We obviously knew what we were doing and we made some pretty important plays. It was a real good weapon for us. Maybe we'll have something in store next week."
Belichick and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels broke out the formation in the third quarter when they were down 28-14 and were struggling to protect Brady. The Patriots wound up scoring on the drive to cut the score to 28-21.
"It's a play that we thought would work," Belichick said. "We ran it three times, a couple different looks. We had six eligible receivers on the field, but only five were eligible. The one who was ineligible reported that he was ineligible. No different than on the punt team or a situation like that."
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