How the NFL Cheats: Spy Games

Whether you call it breaking the rules, bending the rules or just getting creative with the rules, cheating has always been a part of the NFL and always will be. This is Part 4 in a Bleacher Report series on how NFL players and teams seek out some advantage, any advantage, over their competition. Part 1 was on the use of foreign substances, Part 2 on gaining an extra edge at home, Part 3 on what goes on at the bottom of a pile.

Bill Belichick is an NFL historian who presides over maybe the largest library of football books in the world. So after his Patriots were accused of spying on the Jets in a 2007 game, it would not have been implausible if he defended himself by saying he merely was honoring his football forefathers.

Spying—and the suspicion of spying—has been a part of the NFL for longer than helmets.

Go all the way back to the league’s formative years. Former Packers coach Curly Lambeau was so convinced that George Halas was spying on his team that he told his players to avoid talking to people they did not know the week before Halas’ Bears came to town. Halas, he suspected, had spies planted in hotel lobbies, at the YMCA and at bars in town, according to the book Mudbaths and Bloodbaths by Cliff Christl and Gary D’Amato.

Gene Ronzani knew Halas better than most, having played for him and coached for him. When he became head coach of the Packers in 1950, Ronzani took extra precautions to prevent classified information from crossing the Wisconsin-Illinois border. Instead of giving physical playbooks to his players, he showed them drawings of plays for 10 seconds and 10 seconds only—not long enough for them to digest the responsibilities of the entire unit.

“An airplane would fly over, he’d stop practice,” former Packers linebacker Deral Teteak revealed in the book. “He was really paranoid. He used to always say, ‘[Bears spies] are around here somewhere. I know they are.'”

In later years, Packers coach Vince Lombardi reportedly had his players switch jersey numbers during practices in the event that Bears moles were watching.

The suspicions ran both ways in the rivalry.

“During Packers week, and just that week, we’d come to Wrigley Field for the first practice,” says former Bears defensive end Ed O’Bradovich, who played for Halas in the 1960s. “And there would be guards. They were up on the scoreboard. We saw them peeking their head out of the scoreboard. They were in the balcony, two of them, maybe three. And they were on the side door where we got in. [Halas] shut everything down for the Packers. It was tight as a drum. It was like we were hiding the A-bomb formula.”

This was not unusual behavior. Former Jets coach Weeb Ewbank would send employees through the corridors at Shea Stadium to search for spies. Former Redskins coach George Allen had the trees inspected for enemy agents at the team’s training camp in Dickinson College.

Whether or not Halas, Ewbank and Allen had legitimate reason for concern is debatable. But in those eras, Roger Goodell was not doling out $500,000 fines to coaches who ran afoul of the rules.

Browns coach Paul Brown was known to have spies pose as newspaper reporters and attend opponents’ practices. It was duly noted around the league, and to this day many teams have a media policy that prohibits out-of-town reporters from observing practices.

According to legend, the Browns taught a scout to climb telephone poles for surveillance missions.

Brown also took precautions to make sure he …

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