The New England Patriots are the marquee franchise of the NFL and are one of the most successful organizations in American sports, but they sure know how to generate negative headlines.

This past weekend, a Patriots representative was caught illegally videotaping the Cincinnati Bengals' sideline for eight minutes during the Bengals' Week 14 matchup with the Cleveland Browns.

New England, which plays Cincinnati this Sunday, is denying any wrongdoing, saying that “the sole purpose of the filming was to provide an illustration of an advance scout at work on the road,” but based on the Pats' checkered history, some people aren't buying that.

Count Los Angeles Rams offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth among the skeptics.

“I think it’s tough,” Whitworth said on The Rich Eisen Show. “Obviously, it’s one of those that’s going to send up everybody’s alerts across the league. Obviously, it’s one of those things when you keep being involved in a topic or something and it just centers around one team, it makes it tough because it’s one of those things where you go, yeah, it sounds like a harmless situation, but why is it always this team that’s involved in these harmless situations?”

Remember: back in 2007, the Patriots were disciplined by the NFL for videotaping the signals of New York Jets defensive coaches during an early-regular season game, an incident that came to be known as “Spygate.”

For that reason, even if New England was not trying to cheat this past weekend, people are going to be skeptical because of the club's past, and it's hard to blame them.