Bill Cowher Doesn't Blame Spygate for Patriots Playoff Wins Over Steelers

It wasn't the scandal that lead the New England Patriots to playoff wins over the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher doesn't blame anyone but himself for losing to the New England Patriots in 2001 and 2004 during the AFC playoffs. 

During that time, the Patriots and coach Bill Belichick were caught illegally taping other team's signals. A scandal now known as Spygate. 

Cowher doesn't believe it was all the Patriots, though. Earlier this week on 93.7 The Fan, Cowher spoke with Steelers insider Ed Bouchette and said, "It's only cheating if you get caught," adding, "I always thought we never lost the games to New England because of Spygate."

The Hall of Fame coach followed up on his words Thursday morning, saying it was something everyone was doing - the Patriots just got caught. 

"During that timeframe, people were constantly trying to steal signals on the defensive side of the ball because offensively you could talk to the quarterback and the audio was in his helmet," Cowher told The Fans. "So we had, and everyone in the league, would try to get a feel for what the signals were from the defense," said Cowher. "We would sit there and look at the other signal, we would sit there and go to the scouts and everything.

We had a system in place that we could use multiple signals for multiple defenses. If indeed they were able to break our code and find out what our defenses were because of our signals, I do not blame them, I blame us. We didn't do a good enough job of being able to hide our signals. Because they would know what we're playing, it comes down to execution.

On third down and one, we're going to run left behind Alan Faneca. Everybody knew it. But we were still able to do it. So sometimes, even if you know what a team is doing, you have to be able to do it better than them. So that's the bottom line and that's my feeling on SpyGate.

Cowher recently released his book, "Heart and Steel," but avoids talking about the losses to the Patriots. A tough time to reflect on for the Steelers and their fans. However, the head coach isn't hanging his head on why they lost, just that they did. 

"I hate losing. I don't like losing," Cowher said. "But I'm not going to sit there and blame somebody else and say, 'Oh you cheated, I'm going to take my ball and go home.' No. You beat us. You won. And I'm waiting for the next time we play each other."

Noah Strackbein is a Publisher with AllSteelers. Follow Noah on Twitter @NoahStrack, and AllSteelers @si_steelers.

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