Belicheat gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, is slammed with a $500,000 fine, costs his team a 1st round draft pick, and he is still eligible for this award?

What's up with that?

Is there any video of this?

Unbelievable! This so-called Coach of the Year is a certified cheater. He is not worthy of this honor no matter if his team wins every game in the playoffs, including the Super Bowl. There should be some sanctions against those who abuse and trample the integrity of the game.
What is equally dismaying to me is that Joe Gibbs did not get one vote for this honor. He shepherded a team through the most traumatic season I can remember in 55 years of following pro football.

I agree Rick. The fact that Gibbs didnt even garner a single vote is absolutely ridiculous. He was able to squeeze the most out of a squad that has been hit hard by injuries to key players, the tragic death of one of their best players, a tough schedule AND being QB'd by a 10 year backup. To be able to make the playoffs this year is a miracle, all things considered. Joe Gibbs deserves more respect than that.

How could Joe Gibbs not get at least one vote? Even though he called back to back time-outs, on and off the field he has had to endure more than any other coach in NFL History.

And on top of this insult Roy Williams is now going to be added to the NFC Pro Bowl roster. Has hell frozen over? Are pigs flying? Look up overrated in the dictionary and I am convinced you will see a photo of Roy Williams.

Gregg, you're way out of line in thinking that Joe Gibbs was worthy of COTY. Sure, he's pulled the team together, and what he's gone through has been unprecedented. But you gotta know the rules of the game to be considered COTY. Even if it means cheating on the other team....know the rules....

This is just one more example of how the Redskins have become the "Rodney Dangerfield" of the NFL....No respect! The national media up until the tragic death of Sean Taylor never had a positive word to say about the Skins and only now do they say anything positive because they have to. I say keep the damn award, and use this disrespect to stoke the fire and steam role into the Super Bowl. And if you're into numerology think about this. The last time an NFL team went undefeated it was the 1972 Dolphins who met the Redskins in the Super Bowl and won 14 to 7....a total of 21 points! So enjoy the award cheaters errr, ahhh I mean "Patriots"? The real trophy will be ours! I guess in today's society cheating is a prerequisite for being a "Patriot"?

Congratulations to Bill Belichick on a well-deserved accolade. You have to admit that the New England Patriots had a pretty good season this year, even if it was "only" the greatest regular season in the history of football (sorry, 72 Dolphins fans). There certainly have been other great coaching performances this season, including Joe Gibbs, but Bill Belichick is the greatest coach in football history. Now I'm just rooting for the Patriots to go all the way and win the Super Bowl...

Stop complaining about all your Redskins. Fact of the matter is they suffered a terrible tragedy and it would have destroyed any team, but the Redskins made it through a five game skid which included games before Taylors death to reach the playoffs. The Pat's are the best football team ever. They rock! Bellicheat Rocks! Their 34 year old offensive coordinator Rocks! Brady Rocks! Junior Seau Rocks! Go PATS!

Gibbs had a mediocre year at best, one that was salvaged by the gutty play of his team in the final month following Taylor's death. One good month does not make you COTY. 16-0 makes you COTY. So go on, keep pounding the "Beli-cheat" mantra (so very original, by the way) in a time when cheating of one form or another runs rampant in professional sports. I'm not saying it was right, no not at all. But what's done is done...including the 52-7 decimation my Pats laid on your Skins a few months back...so I doubt "the trophy will be yours" if they happen to meet again in Glendale. But good luck with that crazy numerology. Let me know how that works out for you.

ALL YOU SKINS AND PATRIOT FANS NEED TO CALM DOWWWNN! MY BOY TO IS GONNA RUN A FIELD DAY ALL OVER NE in the SB! Romo was barely playing to "let" the skins win! Ha! They will be embarassed in dallas in two weeks, and then we'll waltz into the SB and handle the beatable patcheatahs.

DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS!

JCornellO3 - you are a chump. You better pray that the Jags don't get a piece of your Pats in the playoffs. I just hope you show your face when your team loses. The outrage is that Gibbs didn't even get one vote. And 16-0 is a tremendous feat - but it means nothing if you have to cheat to do it. Just ask Barry Bonds.

Cowboys as champs - yeah right. Romo has one TD in the last month.

This is the Washington Post. Not a paper in New England, or Texas. Go where people care about your respective teams.

don't be a h8r Tyler Durden.

DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS!

WE'RE WINNING THE SUPERBOWL!

Whoa, hold on there Washington, D.C. Fan. I'm a Cowboys fan, and I read the post. What say you?

His team went undefeated; after the cameras were removed. Without the Cameras he gets 50 votes, with them only 29.

I think he's trying to say you ain't nobody but a FOOL. --Mr. T

hey PatsChamp...the quote is "I pity the fool!" don't know where that came from...

DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS! DALLAS!

To Washington, DC Fan:

Sorry, the Washington Post is America's paper -- not just for the hometown fans. And yes, when any whining loser accuses my team's coach of cheating over a minor incident of gamesmanship, I tend to take it just a bit personally.

Fortunately the Patriots are such a great team that they have been able to rise above it all, and I can guarantee you that there isn't a player or coach on that team who cares one iota about anything bad you can say about them. Just go out and beat them out on the field where it counts, and then you can say anything you want.

As a long-time Patriots fan who remained faithful through our early years as the laughingstock of the league, I would love to see the Patriots go back to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in seven seasons, and if your team (or Dallas) is good enough to make it there with us, I wish the best of luck to you. I seem to recall that we've already beaten both of your teams -- convincingly -- in the not too distant past.

Looking forward to the playoffs -- getcha popcorn ready...

Look, there's no way Gibbs should've won the COTY award this year. He (a) didn't know the rules and cost the skins the game against the bills and (b) didn't even know his own defense started out the game with 10 players. Please explain to me how he is deserving of accolades if he doesn't even have control over his own staff.

Phillips doesn't deserve any awards, he was fortunate enough to have the pieces in place from Parcells. Basically he didn't screw it up. While in this city "not screwing it up" may be the recipe for success, it isn't in the NFL or in industries where you're measured by results.

Look, I hate the Pats. Actually that's not true, I hate Boston fans and accordingly dislike the Pats and Red Sox. But Belichick got busted for cheating in Week 1. That was September 9th. That was nearly 4 months ago! So discount the Jets game (which we shouldn't, because the Jets are terrible and would've lost anyways) and Belichick still lead his team to win 15 games. Nobody else is even close. You can make an argument for Mike McCarthy maybe, but turning a young team that came on strong at the end of the last season into a good team isn't as impressive at 16-0. It's just not. He's an unlikeable scrooge who lacks ethics, but he's a darn good football coach.

chill out pats fans ... so much anger coming from a fanbase of a team that went 16-0. can't you show some class?

i agree completely with DaJints. I really dislike Belicheck, but he's been the best this year.

It might have made sense to not award coach of the year if you do not beleive anyone who has been sanctioned by the league merits an award, but to say anyone coached better than Belichick is ridiculous.

Is merely being penalized by the league enough to warrant disqualification from honors? The league has slapped draft choice penalties on a numebr of franshises for a number of violations, inclusing Super Bowl winners for violations inthe year they won.

What rule violations are "cheating" that disqualify one from awards and earn character assassination? Joe Gibbs was penalized 15 yards for "cheating" too by calling a second time out. Is he subject to character assassination? Anyone out there playing with his name ("Coach Fibbs)?" Gibbs's conduct actually affected play. The camera confiscation early in the 1st game before the video could even be used did not.

Of course, at this point, many will root against the New England. America loves an underdog, and any opponent, including the defending champs, will be an underdog against the Pats. But let's not confuse loving underdogs with embracing stupidity. Awarding COY to anyone but Bill B would have had the biggest asterisk in sports.

I really wish I had spell check (Spellichick?).

They get fined a couple hundred thousand, lose a 1st round pick for their cheating, and he's still eligible for COY? Ridiculous. No, Gibbs does NOT deserve it.

To "relax": See comments #1 and #3 in this post if you want to understand why Patriots fans feel disrespected. We don't start these flame wars, but sometimes we feel honor-bound to respond. Spygate was the most painful incident I have ever had to endure as a Patriots fan -- and that's saying a lot if you know our team's history -- but I sincerely believe that this was an instance where a minor piece of gamesmanship was elevated to a capital offense by a newbie commissioner with something to prove, and who needed to seem even-handed in the wake of the Michael Vick controversy. It's too bad that it happened, but I put this in the same class as the receiver who acts like he caught the ball when it bounced off the ground, or the defensive players who call out signals to fake out the offense, or the holier-than-thou coach (you know who I'm talking about) who artificially amplifies the crowd noise in his stadium to drown out the signal-calling. Face it, gamesmanship is a part of the NFL, in all of its forms, and it's not like the Patriots were somehow gaining this incredible advantage by taping the other teams' signals in the first place.

Defending the honor of your team is not classless. What lacks class is crying and making excuses when your team can't win where it counts -- on the field. If the Patriots somehow lose a game before the end of this season, I guarantee that every coach and player who steps up to the mike will congratulate the other team for a game well played, instead of crying about the officiating, saying that they were really the better team, etc. etc. etc. The Patriots are an immortal team with class, honor, and true greatness, and I'm proud to be a fan...

Regardless of what Gibbs has done this year, he's not worthy of COTY. You're all dillusional and homer fans. Bellichick was caught very early this year, he's a remarkable coach despite his shenanigans.

I eat poop, literally.

Gibbs as COTY? Lets see, lost 2 starting OL, starting RB and #1 WR played most of the season injured, starting CB, LB, and QB, lost for the season. Death of Taylor. Through it all,the players, Portis, Fletcher, Moss, etc..have all said it was Gibbs, and Gibbs alone, who kept the team together. Kept them focused on the what they were trying to achieve.
The Bills loss was not Gibbs fault. They squandered MANY opportunities to defeat the Bills. (inside the Bills 5 yard line twice in the 1stQ and only getting 2 FG is one example) As for the 10 man defense? After the long run, the Bills punted.
There is a reason Gibbs has won 3 Super Bowls with 3 diffrent QB's and made the playoffs with 6. He focuses on the TEAM concept. That the whole is larger than the sum of its parts.
Bellichick did do a great job of coaching this year. I don't like his style, but thats just me.
Gibbs might not have gone 16-0, which is nothing to take lightly, but for him not to get a single vote is wrong.

I don't think many of the people posting here are arguing that Gibbs deserved to win COTY outright. Just the fact that he didn't garner a single vote. Yes, he had a senile moment against buffalo and Yes, The Patriots were the best team during the regular season. But when a team could have imploded under the conditions the redskins have faced, they were held together by Gibbs. It may not fall under the normal criteria of COTY, but they endured something that no other team has ever had to face after Sean Taylor passed away. That Gibbs didn't come into the conversation at all is just a mistake. We can talk about "class" all day, but the redskins organization and Joe Gibbs in particular have displayed it all season.

Bellichick does not deserve COY because he was caught cheating, period. I am a huge Terps fan and Shawne Merriman was a beast on the field last year, but Merriman should not have got DPOY because he cheated.The same should apply to any off-field cheating. And it's not the same as pretending you caught a pass at all, that's why you don't lose a 1st round draft pick for pretending to catch a pass...
And for all of you rationalizing that it didn't help the Pats that much, just admit that you(or I)have absolutely no idea how much it helped the Pats. Maybe it helped an amazing amount, maybe it made no difference at all, but you (or anyone else outside of the NFL) have absolutely no idea. We only know that the league levied a very stiff penalty, the kind of penalty that would only be appropriate if the cheating gave the Pats a competitive advantage.
The sad part is that for this reason, the Pat's season will be forever tainted. It's quite possible, even likely, that the Pats could have gone 16-0 without cheating. However, they chose to cheat and there will always be a cloud of doubt (an asterisk, if you will) because we can't be sure that the Pats would be undefeated if they didn't cheat. There is no way any Pats fan can ever prove that the undefeated season would have happened without the cheating, and unfortunately, that cheapens the accomplishment.What a shame...

Does any of this really matter in the scheme of life? Just remember that sports are here for our entertainment. Everyone is going to have their own opinion and that's what makes it fun!!

Who said cheaters never prosper?

On another note: did anyone watch Inside The NFL last night? I swear if Marino and Collingsworth do not have the biggest heads, I don't know what. The program just breezed over the 'skins as if the win over Dallas was nothing, and didn't even bother to talk about the game this Saturday, the one where the 'skins are going to clean Mike Holmgren's clock.

I grew up in DC and love the Skins. I now live in Boston, and root for thepats as my second team too, though not as much as the Skins. I watched Allen spy more than any one on Dallas and applauded it. Everyone does it. So the Pats / Jets incident amused me, not horrified me. The fact that it happened in the first half of the first game should tell everyone that it really didn't matter. The Pats are truely the best team, this year. Why? Because they are a team, not a bunch of individuals like Dallas's Terrell Owens. They also have a great owner who is hands off, unlike Dan S.,and great GM who controls the draft. And most of all, the players leave money on the table, so they can pay other good players . For instance Brady, who is the most underpaid all star QB in the league, by choice. Don't forget that Moss took a 2 mil pay cut to join the Pats.
I love the Skins and Gibbs, and hope they get to the Super Bowl again soon. But the Pats win because they have the best organization, owner, and team players.
When the Skins get another good owner like Cooke, and have an organization like the Pats, they will be back on top, and I can't wait. But til then, admire a great organization that is designed to win. They are really the only true "team" in the NFL,and that is why they consistently win.

Mike Sommerville, good argument there. I'm a native Marylander, so I would like to see the Skins succeed again one day. (For the record before any of you accuse me of being a bandwagon jumper, my parents are from New England. The Pats, Sox, Celts, and B's are in my blood.) And belatedly to you, Tyler Durden, I will certianly stand up and congratulate any team that might topple my Pats before the end of the season. Would you do the same if someone beats the Skins, or will you cry foul and make excuses? And yes, the Jags worry me a bit, but I don't think their offense has the explosive ability to match the Pats blow for blow.
Now, can we all forget about this and move together over to the Roy Williams message thread? I'm sure Skins and Pats fans alike can unite behind the argument that Mr. I-always-get-beat-badly-and-take-horrible-angles-to-the-receiver-so-that's-why-I-use-the-horse-collar-tackle is the most O-VER-RA-TED (clap, clap, clapclapclap) player in the NFL.
Go Pats.

'The Patriots are an immortal team with class, honor, and true greatness, and I'm proud to be a fan...'

this is funny. immortal?

your coach cheated. people overreacted in the media because he's he's generally been a jerk to everyone in the past. the team didn't get much of a punishment at all from the league. those no reason to worry about your 'honor.' please just chill out

folks we are thinking about all of this the wrong way think about it what does coach of the year means someone who does more with less in my opinion not only Gibbs deserves consideration but here are few names Mike Mccarthy, Romeo Crennel,but where does coach of the year honors come from 99 percent the media and the main reason Belichick got the vote was not because the pats went 16-0 and they are making history the main reason is because the pats use the media to their advantage and know how to manipute the media.

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