{"id":758178,"date":"2026-07-12T07:50:43","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T07:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/758178\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T07:50:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T07:50:43","slug":"james-harrison-doubles-down-on-patriots-cheating-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/758178\/","title":{"rendered":"James Harrison Doubles Down On Patriots Cheating Allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Harrison remains as convinced as ever that the New England Patriots cheated their way to the 2004 Super Bowl. Relitigating the Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 AFC Championship Game loss, Harrison says the Patriots countered too often for it to be anything other than something suspect.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I say they caught us, they only missed one blitz,\u201d Harrison told co-host Joe Haden on his Deebo & Joe podcast Friday.<\/a> \u201cWhat in the world, Joe, how many times in your career have you ever seen where an offense gets y\u2019all on every blitz but one? Don\u2019t forget, we\u2019re Blitzburgh back then. We\u2019re talking about 25 [blitzes].\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison is referring to the Patriots ability to pick up nearly every blitz the Steelers threw at Tom Brady. Pittsburgh\u2019s scheme was exotic and varied under defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau, but New England seemingly had all the right answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re throwing it right where you wouldn\u2019t want to throw it,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you look at this false setup we got coming to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s referring to New England\u2019s blocking scheme that ignored the \u201cfalse rush\u201d from one side to pick up the actual blitz somewhere else. Tom Brady threw for 207 yards and two touchdowns while only being sacked twice after throwing two picks and being dropped four times in the Patriots\u2019 regular-season loss.<\/p>\n

Ranking No. 1 in the regular season, Pittsburgh\u2019s defense allowed a season-high 34 points, the other seven coming off a Ben Roethlisberger pick that was returned for a touchdown shortly before halftime.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care what nobody says. They were catching all that,\u201d Harrison said.<\/p>\n

Harrison is far from the only Steeler to make such allegations. Reserve offensive lineman Barrett Brooks has made the claim while running back Jerome Bettis has said similar.<\/a> In 2007, the Patriots were exposed in their Spygate scandal for illegally taping opponent\u2019s signals. The NFL punished them with a heavy fine and forfeiture of a first-round pick, but Roger Goodell destroyed the tapes of the team\u2019s spying.<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh\u2019s Super Bowl hopes ended one game short after going 15-1 in the regular season. In 2005, the Steelers avoided the Patriots in the playoffs and made a historical Super Bowl run while becoming the first sixth seed to ever win it all. Harrison would win another ring with Pittsburgh before later joining New England to close out his career, one that ended in a Super Bowl loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Harrison remains as convinced as ever that the New England Patriots cheated their way to the 2004…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[106663,1815,349,1321,99],"class_list":["post-758178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-james-harrison","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}