NFL Espionage: The incredible, unbelievable top-secret ways the Saints and Packers outsmarted Cowboys OC Kellen Moore
FRISCO - The Ukraine ain't got nothin' on the Saints and the Packers, who utilized the height of espionage - old Boise State game film from Kellen Moore's playing days - to learn all the secrets of the Dallas Cowboys playbook, resulting in back-to-back Cowboys losses.
"To hell with blocking and tackling,'' one New Orleans Saints source told CowboysSI.com following last week's 12-10 defeat of Dallas. "We looked at 2008 Boise State film of when Kellen started quarterbacking there. And we stole it all.
"We looked at the film and read his lips. Kellen has, shall we say, very expressive lips.''
A Packers source expressed to CowboysSI.com a similar sentiment following Sunday's 34-24 win at Dallas, saying that Green Bay's scouting department got bleary-eyed watching hot-seated Jason Garrett film of his Princeton playing days mining for similar informational gold.
"We got bleary-eyed, though,'' admits the Packers scout, "because of the grainy nature of the old film. And because of Jason's irrepressible red hair. It was really distracting.''
Saints players in particular are on the record with NFL Network to assert that old game tapes reveal hands signals used by Moore in college that they took at hints for what they might see against the Cowboys now that Moore is the coordinator here.
Meanwhile, the coaching staffs at the Giants, the Redskins and the Dolphins - three teams that were blown out by now-3-2 Dallas - are NFL laughingstocks due to their failure to recognize the value of studying game film of Dallas assistant coaches when they were college players. Following the firing of Redskins head coach Jay Gruden, we're told Washington staffers have for the futurebeen instructed to study Razorbacks hand signals circa 1960 (when Jerry Jones was an Arkansas lineman) and 1988 when Stephen Jones was a linebacker/safety.)
Said one Redkins source: "I mean, it's Arkansas. How clever can it really be?''
Dallas plays at the New York Jets this week, and sources tell tell CowboysSI.com that Jets scouting are already perusing antiquated film to try to solve not only Dallas offense, but its defense as well.
"We really have no idea of how to find Marinelli film from his playing days in in 1970 at California Lutheran,'' the source said. "But he served in Vietnam before that. If there were any 'hand signals' or anything like that there, we're all over it.''
