Still doubting my premonitions? Here. Read this article or look at the sections I have highlighted below to show that teams have been doing this sort of thing FOR YEARS. Some of the names on this list will surprise you. Way more than JJ in this article:
http://bleacherreport.com/arti...romoting-parity
"In “Spreading the Word Is No Secret In the NFL” (The New York Times, October 26, 2008, it’s revealed that such players sometimes reveal the meaning of their former teams’ signals and audibles to their new teams.
The Patriots sparked outrage by filming Jets’ coaching signals rather than just their players. (Yet, somehow it’s perfectly fine if one of that team’s former players simply tells you what all the signals mean.)
Teams have long studied signals and tried to decipher them. NFL rules allow this practice. In turn, teams take countermeasures to protect signals. They can change the meaning of their signals. They can have people screening their signalers from eyes on the opposing sideline.
Often, they have multiple coaches signaling at the same time with their own players knowing which coach to watch, or they can hope their opponent doesn’t decipher them.
Starting in 1994, calling offensive plays became simpler. New rules allowed coaches to call plays through a radio in the quarterback’s helmet. This method makes hand signals unnecessary although teams still have them in case of an emergency. Coaches simply hold laminated sheets in front of their mouths to guard against lip readers.
In football’s early days, players often called their own plays, leaving no coaching signals for opponents to decode. In the 1920s, some players, like George Halas and Curly Lambeau served as player/coaches and played three ways: on offense, defense, and special teams.
Is it safe to assume they called plays on the field?
As late as the 1960s and 70s, many quarterbacks still called their own plays. By this time, however, some coaches called plays from the sideline. For instance, the Packers’ Vince Lombardi had quarterback Bart Starr call most of the offensive plays, but the Packers called defensive plays from the sideline.
(See, “Dinner Conversation with Vince Lombardi” from The Vince Lombardi Scrapbook by George Flynn, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1976, pgs. 17-18.).
Paul Brown coached the Browns from 1946-1963 and introduced many innovations to the game. Brown preferred calling plays from the sideline. He experimented with radio helmets for quarterbacks, but the league banned them until 1994. (Starting in 2008, the league allowed defensive players to wear similar helmets.)
In one game before the ban, Tom Landry—a Giants assistant who later became a Hall of Fame coach for the Cowboys—tuned into the Browns’ radio frequency, allowing him to call the right defensive plays.
The Giants won.
(See “Sacks, Lies and Videotape” by Mark Bowden, The New York Times, Sunday May 18, 2008.)
Brown also sent plays in with substitute players, “shuttle guards.” This also bypassed hand signs. By the mid to late 1980s, it was rare for quarterbacks to call their own plays. Coaches called them from the sideline often using hand signals which opponents could also see.
In a 1990's article about football terminology, Pro Football Weekly discussed hand signals.
Electronic and other kinds of subterfuge likewise have a long NFL history. The NFC Championship trophy is named after George Halas. For 63 years, Halas owned the Chicago Bears. For 40 of those years, he coached them, winning 324 games (still the second most in NFL history) and six NFL Championships.
During his ownership, the team won a total of eight NFL titles. An innovator who pioneered the use of game film, Halas also had a reputation for espionage. Rivals and reporters claimed that he bugged locker rooms, coaches’ boxes, and teams’ phone systems. They said he had spies watch practices.
In fact, Fido Murphy, a Bears’ scout who also worked for the Steelers, once admitted to having a kid watch a Rams’ practice. The kid hid under the scoreboard, studying the defense. Murphy passed the information to Bears’ coaches and advised them on countering the defense.
After George Allen, a Halas assistant and father of former Senator George Allen, left Halas’s staff, he gained a reputation for “paranoia” about other teams spying, especially Halas’s Bears. Allen worried about electronic bugs in offices and locker rooms and about spies watching practices.
He even hired a detective, Ed Boyton, for counter-surveillance. The NFL now bans many surveillance methods like bugging field phones.
It’s not known when someone first filmed coaching signals. It goes back at least to 1990 when Marty Schottenheimer coached Kansas City. Both on a Fox pregame show and on WFAN, a New York radio station, Jimmy Johnson, who coached the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl Championships, said he also had staffers tape opposing coaches.
Johnson said teams could tape signals from the press box, but sometimes the press box was on the wrong side of the field. In that case, the cameraman filmed from the sidelines. Johnson, who also had interns search other teams’ trash for discarded notes and game plans, said taping coaches wasn’t worth the effort and abandoned it.
Johnson learned the procedure in 1990 from Mark Hatley, a Kansas Cityscout, who taught him how Marty Schottenheimer’s Chiefs did it. Johnson praised one Schottenheimer assistant, Howard Mudd, as “the best in the entire league at stealing signals.” During much of the current decade, including their Super Bowl year, Mudd worked for the Indianapolis Colts.
One of Belichick’s fiercest Spygate critics and Mudd’s boss from 2002-2008 with the Colts, Tony Dungy, also served on Schottenheimer’s Kansas City staff. Other notable Schottenheimer assistants in Kansas City include Herm Edwards, who later served as the Jets' head coach before returning to the Chiefs in that capacity.
Edwards was so familiar with taping tactics that he waved to the Patriots' camera recording him. Long time Steelers' coach Bill Cowher also worked for Schottenheimer in Kansas City. During his career,Schottenheimer also coached the Cleveland Browns, Washington Redskins, and San Diego Chargers.
During Schottenheimer’s first few seasons in Kansas City, offenses still used hand signals too, meaning his defense also benefited from deciphering signals."
