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Dallas Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips didn't have much to say about the situation in New England, but during today's press conference he explained why this type of thing shouldn't even be an issue:

"We did vote and I did get up at the [off-season competition committee] meeting to have the defense be able to communicate with the signal caller in the spring and they voted it down.

One of the reasons I got up in front of the whole group when we tried to get it passed and said the very thing, we could take away people trying to cheat, if you want to call it, trying to steal people's signals, if we just do the communication, just like we did on offense."

Obviously, the vote didn't pass, and here we are, one week into the 2007 season, and Bill Belichick's in deep doo-doo. Apparently, the owners felt that it would be a logistical nightmare trying to legislate which defensive player had the hearing device in his helmet. Well, it's no more of a logistical nightmare than sending an assistant to the opponents' side of the field to steal signs.

Phillips had no thoughts on what the Patriots' punishment should be, but offered this when asked if he hopes the incident will help his cause next year: "I hope so ... because we were the ones who voted for it ... to me we could just eliminate all of that - it's just messy." Yeah, Belichick agrees.