NFL | New England coach Bill Belichick blasts Matt Walsh

NFL |

BOSTON — New England coach Bill Belichick lashed out at the Patriots' former video assistant Friday, saying in a televised interview that Matt Walsh was a low-level staffer who was fired for "poor job performance."

"There's not a lot of credibility," Belichick said in an interview broadcast on "CBS Evening News."

Belichick added, "You know, he's tried to make it seem like we're buddies, and belong to the same book club and all. That's really a long, long stretch."

Belichick acknowledged he violated league rules prohibiting filming opponents' signals but insisted there was no intent to hide what he was doing.

"I made a mistake," he said in the interview. "I was wrong. I was wrong."

Commissioner Roger Goodell fined the coach $500,000 and docked the Patriots $250,000 and their first-round draft pick.

In an interview with HBO for "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," Walsh dismissed Belichick's attempts to minimize the impact of the taping. Walsh told HBO he was coached on how to evade league rules, and that team officials told him ways to avoid detection.

"When I was doing it, I understood what we were doing to be wrong," Walsh said.

"Coach Belichick's explanation for having misinterpreted the rules, to me, that really didn't sound like taking responsibility for what we had done, especially considering the great lengths that we had gone through to hide what we were doing."

Belichick denied telling Walsh to hide what he was doing.

"You look at the tape. You see him filming the game," the coach told CBS. "You tell me how discreet it is."

Note

• Team owners could opt out of their agreement with the players union next week, leaving open the possibility of a 2010 season without a salary cap.

The labor agreement, signed in March 2006, is on the agenda for the league meetings in Atlanta on Tuesday. Both sides have the right to get out of the deal by Nov. 8.