Film schooled

I know who they are, these New England Patriots. They're the dumbest smart guys in America.

They're an organization that has won six Super Bowls and 16 division titles in 18 years, that has been the standard for professional sports excellence for a more sustained period than perhaps anyone in history -- and yet every time they enter the living room, they trip over the footstool like Dick Van Dyke.

They're 007, except when they're Maxwell Smart.

They're the guy who shouts "Catch me if you can!" and then runs into a blind alley that ends in a 20-foot brick wall.

They're the guy who steals the Mona Lisa in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses and tries to walk out of the Louvre with it, saying "Nothing to see here!" They're the spy who blends into the scenery by going to a funeral dressed as a circus clown. They're the film crew who says "We're just here to ... shoot a documentary! Yeaaahhh, that's it!"

Yeesh. You'd think such a numbingly competent organization would be smart enough not to try to run the exact same scam that got them in trouble in Spygate a dozen years ago, but, nah. They did it again. And got caught again. And -- here's the kicker -- for the Bengals.

Which, again, mirrors Spygate almost exactly. The last time the Sneaktriots got caught pulling the old we're-just-shooting-a-documentary con, they were filming the Jets, who went 4-12 that season. And the Bengals?

The Bengals are, um, 1-12.

The Patriots could beat them if Tom Brady wore Depends and used a walker (which could happen any day now). They could beat them if Cindy Brady was their quarterback. Why bother spying on the Bengals, for God's sake?

And why make it so clumsily obvious by, in the midst of the "documentary" on a Patriots scout, training the cameras on the Bengals' sideline for a full ten minutes?

Don't know if that's plain stupidity or utter hubris. The two do, after all, frequently look a lot alike.

But either way?

Works out to the same thing. Dumb, shake hands with dumber.