Spygate rehash turns into tense Deion Sanders-Tony Dungy feud

Deion Sanders: Enough about the Patriots cheating, remember how the Colts used to cheat?Tony Dungy, former Colts head coach: Oh, everyone does that kind cheating! Nah nah nah Spygate nah nah nah!The Patriots’ sensational Super Bowl LI comeback win offered...

Spygate rehash turns into tense Deion Sanders-Tony Dungy feud

Deion Sanders: Enough about the Patriots cheating, remember how the Colts used to cheat?

Tony Dungy, former Colts head coach: Oh, everyone does that kind cheating! Nah nah nah Spygate nah nah nah!

The Patriots’ sensational Super Bowl LI comeback win offered a fresh opportunity to discuss the franchise’s asterisk-worthy extra-legal tactics — its spate of -Gates — and “Prime Time” spun that scrutiny right over to the Peyton Manning-led Indianapolis teams of the mid-2000s.

“Those same critics, did they say anything about the wins that the Indianapolis Colts had? You want to talk about that too? Because they were getting everybody’s signals,” Sanders said Sunday night on NFL Network, via WEEI. “Come on, you don’t walk up to the line and look over here and the man on the sideline giving you the defense that they’ve stolen the plays of. … Everybody in the NFL knew. We just didn’t let the fans know. That was real and that was happening in Indy.”

Now Dungy has blasted back, defending the alleged Colts sign-stealing as fair game — and invoking the use of videotape (as in the Patriots’ Spygate scandal of 2007) as the line between right and wrong.

“That’s all part of the game, but doing it legally and illegally, that’s the difference,” Dungy, now an NBC Sports analyst, said Wednesday morning on “PFT Live.”

“Stealing signals, you can go back to 1800s in baseball. You can go back to anywhere signals are done, people are watching and trying to get signals.

“And you looked over there because you wanted to know as a defensive player: ‘Is it going to be three wide receivers? Is it going to be two tight ends? Who’s in the game?’ There’s a person over there signaling, and Deion Sanders and every other defensive player would look at the offensive sideline to get that signal.

“I hope Deion is not saying we did something illegally.”

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