Welcome to the second part of my infinite-part series, Correcting Bill Simmons. To find out why I started this series, feel free to read the first part. Simply stated – Bill Simmons is an entertaining writer, but sometimes he goes off the reservation and says something absurd.

This week, in his Ramblings column, he defends his Patriots over the whole Spygate fiasco.

If you have a national column in which you’re excoriating a sports team for cheating even though it already paid a severe penalty for what it did, and you’re hinting more revelations are coming down the road, and then it’s proven you were barking up the wrong tree … you need to admit defeat and quit blowing the situation out of proportion. No, really.

What gets me is that he thinks that the Patriots “already paid a severe penalty” for what they did. This is why Boston fans annoy me. Let’s see, the Patriots were caught videotaping the Jets sideline in a game last season and Matt Walsh produced more videotapes from 2000-2003, so it’s pretty clear to anyone that’s objective about the situation that the team has been videotaping their opponents’ sidelines during Bill Belichick’s entire run. And the “severe penalty” is losing a single first round pick and paying a fine? Is he serious?

If you took a poll of all NFL fans, I think the overwhelming majority would say that the Pats got off with a slap on the wrist. Their “punishment” was a joke considering that they knowingly broke the rules by stealing signals for at least seven years. If this were the Giants, Boston fans would be foaming at the mouth, bitching and complaining that the penalty wasn’t stiff enough.

Bill, take the Patriot Glasses off for a minute and look at this situation objectively.