Bill Cowher: Steelers Didn't Lose 2001 AFC Title Game to Patriots Because of Spygate

Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Bill Cowher doesn't believe his teams losing to the New England Patriots in two AFC Championship Games had anything to do with the Patriots' stealing defensive signals. 

Per The Athletic's Ed Bouchette, Cowher writes in his new memoir that the Patriots' advantage in the games wasn't the result of Spygate. 

Cowher also told Bouchette about his level of respect for New England head coach Bill Belichick:

“I have a lot of respect for him. He loves the game. We shared a lot of time together and time off the field, teaching each other about linebacker play and defensive backfield play. It came down to us being finalists for the 1991 Cleveland Browns job and he got the job and I didn’t. We went from friends to adversaries the next year because I found myself the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. As we competed against each other it was just a great competition.”

In Sept. 2007, Belichick was fined $500,000 and the Patriots were docked $250,000 and forced to forfeit their 2008 first-round draft pick as discipline from the league after it was determined the team filmed New York Jets defensive signals from an on-field location. 

Eight years later, an investigative piece from ESPN's Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham included a section about NFL executives destroying physical evidence of scouting material that contained "videotapes of opponents' signals, with detailed notes matching signals to plays for many teams going back seven seasons."

One of the games included on those videotapes, per the report, was the AFC Championship Game against the Steelers on Jan. 27, 2002:

"Among them were handwritten diagrams of the defensive signals of the Pittsburgh Steelers, including the notes used in the January 2002 AFC Championship Game won by the Patriots 24-17. Yet almost as quickly as the tapes and notes were found, they were destroyed, on Goodell's orders: League executives stomped the tapes into pieces and shredded the papers inside a Gillette Stadium conference room."

Former Steelers linebacker Joey Porter accused the Patriots of stealing opponents' signals for years during a conversation with ESPN's Keyshawn Johnson on Sunday NFL Countdown in November 2008. 

"Come on, man. They've been videotaping for years, man," Porter said. "You cannot sit up there and honestly tell me if it wasn't working, why was he doing it so much?"

The Steelers lost in the AFC title game to New England in the 2001 and 2005 seasons. 

In June 2020, the NFL fined the Patriots $1.1 million, forced them to forfeit a third-round draft pick and banned their video crew from filming any games during the 2020 season after New England illegally videotaped the Cincinnati Bengals sideline in 2019.

Cowher spent 15 seasons as Pittsburgh's head coach from 1992-2006. He went 149-90-1 with two Super Bowl appearances, including a 21-10 win over the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL.