NEW YORK — Roger Goodell is fully prepared to crack down again on the New England Patriots if his meeting with Matt Walsh uncovers a tape made of the St. Louis Rams' final walkthrough practice before the 2002 Super Bowl.

"Taping a walkthrough is much different from what I punished them for," the NFL commissioner said Thursday at a meeting of a group representing the Associated Press Sports Editors.

After more than two months of negotiations, lawyers for the league and Walsh, the former New England employee, finally reached agreement Wednesday on terms that will allow him to talk Goodell. They include an agreement by the Patriots not to sue Walsh and to pay his legal expenses and his airfare to New York from Hawaii, where he is now a golf pro.

Walsh's name first surfaced just before the Super Bowl, in which the Patriots were upset by the New York Giants after finishing the regular season 16-0 and winning two playoff games. Among the allegations was that the Patriots illegally taped the Rams' final walkthrough before that title game, when New England, a two-touchdown underdog, upset St. Louis 20-17.

Five months before their loss to the Giants, New England coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 and the team $250,000 for taping the New York Jets' defensive signals during the season opener. The Patriots also lost their first-round pick in this weekend's draft.

Goodell said Thursday he has no idea what Walsh, who spent six years as a New England employee, has to offer than what the league already knows: Belichick had been taping defensive signals since first becoming Patriots coach in 2000. He noted, however, that the league, which destroyed the tapes from the Jets game after reviewing them, had spoken to 50 people in connection with the case and that Walsh was the only one who asked for legal protection.

Belichick has emphatically denied taping the walkthrough. "I have never taped a practice, certainly not that one," New England's coach has said repeatedly.

Goodell said his mind is open on the subject.

Goodell also said he gave no guarantees to owner Jerry Jones or anyone from the Dallas Cowboys that he will reinstate Adam "Pacman" Jones, whom the Cowboys obtained in a trade with Tennessee on Wednesday. He expects to meet in June with Pacman Jones, who was suspended all of last season for multiple violations of the league's code of behavior.