Much-Awaited Leak of Video Proves Patriots Did Not Cheat

David Mondillo, the supervising producer who has since been suspended by the Patriots, released the following statement.

On December 8th, I was doing what I have done for what I have for more than 18 years — working to produce high-quality content that tells the unique, behind-the-scenes stories of people, players, and the organization. It never occurred to me that my actions and the actions of my crew would be misconstrued.

Our department was charged with completing four “Do Your Job” segments before the end of the year. One of the segments was to follow a pro scout throughout his week to show the audience what his job entails.

Before the shoot began, I obtained permission and received credentials and a parking pass for Sunday’s game.

With permission in hand, we started taping on December 6th — following the scout’s travel through the weekend to Cleveland and obtained footage of him working in his hotel room and interviewed him about his job. The final element needed to complete the story was to shoot from the press box at Progressive Field to show the audience what his responsibilities are on game day.

We went directly to the press box and set up our camera to get the footage we needed. We interviewed and shot the Patriots scout sitting in a chair watching the action and panned back and forth from him to what he was seeing on the sidelines. We also took footage of the field as the intent was to show what he was looking at when he looked through his binoculars watching the game.

At that point, I went to the restroom and when I came back, my cameraman was told to stop shooting by someone from the NFL and he was joined by two others from the Bengals organization and an additional NFL security person. We stopped shooting immediately when asked to do so and cooperated fully. We had a detailed exchange about who we were and why we were there and what they wanted us to do. I gave the Sony SXS card to NFL security and we complied with their request, packed up, and went home. I had no intention to provide footage to football operations, I did not provide any footage, and I was never asked to do so.

The team’s suspension of Mondillo lasts for the duration of the season, as the NFL is continuing its investigation.

Here is the Patriots’ statement:

For the past year, the New England Patriots content team has produced a series of behind-the-scenes features on various departments within the organization. The seven previous “Do Your Job” episodes are archived on patriots.com. On Sunday, Dec. 8, the content team sent a three-person video crew to the Bengals-Browns game at FirstEnergy Stadium in order to capture one part of a longer feature on the Patriots scouting department, in this case a Patriots pro personnel scout while he was working in the press box.

While we sought and were granted credentialed access from the Cleveland Browns for the video crew, our failure to inform the Bengals and the League was an unintended oversight. In addition to filming the scout, 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 production crew is independent of our football operation. While aware that one of the scouts was being profiled for a “Do Your Job” episode, our football 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.

While the NFL will continue its witchhunt, for the New England Patriots, nothing in that video will back up the theory of cheating, so the haters are just going to have to bite the bullet on this one.

The Patriots are innocent.