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Marshall Faulk made headlines Wednesday when he said he was over the Rams’ loss to New England in Super Bowl XXXVI, but that he felt cheated out of the Super Bowl thanks to allegations of the Patriots videotaping the Rams’ walkthrough. Willie McGinest, a cornerstone of New England’s Super Bowl-winning teams, has responded by saying if the Pats had any advantage, the game would’ve been a blowout instead of the 20-17 outcome. Willie McGinest joined 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston with Felger and Mazz to discuss Marshall Faulk’s comments about feeling cheated out of Super Bowl XXXVI, if he’s sick of hearing that argument and what he sees in the current version of the New England Patriots.
On Marshall Faulk saying that the Patriots seemed to have a beat on plays that the Rams had never run before:
“I don’t know what particular plays he’s talking about in the red zones, but in all of our defenses, we had checks. Regardless of what you line up in, you couldn’t switch a formation and move guys around, and you were going to see our whole defense switch over. You don’t have to practice that or see those type of plays. If we have a 3-by-1, a check goes a certain way for us. If we have 2-by-2, a check goes a certain way for us. We were a very smart football team defensively. We had a lot of guys that could line up and knew what to do. We communicated very well. I was just out there playing. … If we had any extra information, then that game wouldn’t have been as dramatic as it was, coming down to a field goal. Trust me, it would have been a blowout.”
How do you feel when you keep hearing about it though?:
“I mean, we don’t make excuses. We wasn’t aware of any cameras or anything like that going on. The guys out there, we worked hard, we put in a lot of work, we prided ourselves on challenging each other, we always felt like the underdog. I think that was the biggest thing for us going into that game. We knew we were a big underdog, so we came into that game with a chip on our shoulder anyway. And we don’t really pay attention to it. When you hear it, that somebody cheated, cheated is like you’re doing something that you know you’re doing to get a competitive advantage or whatever. We wasn’t aware of any of that stuff.”
Do you think this Patriots’ defense can communicate as well as that group did?:
“They have certain guys that can do that; I don’t think they have enough. … We had guys that were interchangeable that could do each others’ job. That’s part of winning the game. A lot of times, when we played teams, the game was won during the week for us. The game wasn’t won on Sunday, because we were so well-prepared. We knew what to do, we would see things, we would call out the play before it was coming. It wasn’t just in the Super Bowl, we were doing that all year long.”
The Pats haven’t won a Super Bowl in eight years. Do you think they’re lacking anywhere else?:
“On the offense, you’ve got Tom Brady, and you’ve got some really talented players. You’ve got to have a certain caliber of player. Bill always preached that he wanted tough, smart guys that can adjust, and that can make plays. I think if you’re comparing teams, we had more of it. We had more veteran guys that were able to do that, that we can go in and we can govern ourselves and make adjustments and we held each other accountable. They’re still growing, they’re still learning. It’s going to take some time for this team to get that. But, let’s understand this: The teams that I played on, this team will never be that. They’re a different group of guys; it’s a different time, a different era.”
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