Brady suspended for 4 games HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
- Thread starter TheOriginalHappyGoat
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...2c8d2c-ffd4-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html
Redskins columnist, thinking clearly:
In trying to restore his authority through Deflategate, Roger Goodell undermined his credibility
By Sally Jenkins Columnist May 21 at 2:11 PM
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell predetermined guilt in DeflateGate; that’s clear now. He has smeared Tom Brady and the New England Patriots without proper evidence or a competent investigation, and turned an unimportant misdemeanor into a damaging scandal, as part of a personal power play to shore up his flagging authority. In other cases, he just looked inept. In this one, he looks devious.
Wednesday night at the NFL owners meetings in San Francisco, Goodell as much as admitted that the Wells report is incomplete, despite the fact that it took four months, cost millions in legal fees, and was supposed to be comprehensive. After all, the league used it to levy historically harsh penalties against Brady and the Patriots, claiming they deflated footballs in the AFC championship game. Nevertheless, Goodell opened the door to walking it back, saying he wants to talk personally to Brady, who has appealed his four-game suspension.
“I look forward to hearing directly from Tom if there is new information or there is information that can be helpful to us in getting this right,” Goodell said.
Now this is the height of disingenuousness. Because we already know the Wells report missed crucial information and didn’t consider important facts. Ted Wells either overlooked or ignored crucial text messages, he used a firm with a reputation for bending science to fit predetermined conclusions, and he cherry-picked the memory of an NFL referee. But that’s not all. The Wells report left completely unexamined the fact that the NFL has never once considered the inflation of footballs to be a matter of great integrity or competitive advantage, before now.
And this is where Brady can blow the commissioner out of a courtroom. And perhaps out of his job.
League history makes it obvious that Goodell is practicing selective enforcement, purely for his own purpose. The NFL rules simply state that footballs should be inflated within a range of 12.5 to 13.5 pounds per square inch. For nearly a decade it has let each team provide a dozen of its own balls, and let quarterbacks choose them according to preference and feel, and to fiddle with the pressure, without penalty. Aaron Rodgers has said he tells his equipment guys to over-inflate the ball, and see if the refs catch it.
That the league has never particularly enforced standards is evident in a hilarious section in which the Wells report eats its own tail. According to Wells, in a game between the Patriots and Jets it was discovered that the refs had inflated the balls to 16 psi. Brady got upset when he found them hard to handle. That’s how uneven ball inflation in the NFL is, and how weak the Wells report is. The only firm evidence that Brady ever had a conversation with anyone about ball pressure comes in this instance, when the ball was wildly over-inflated to 16 psi — by the league’s own refs.
What’s more, messing with the ball has been treated as a misdemeanor in other cases. In a very cold 2014 game between the Carolina Panthers and Minnesota Vikings, sideline cameras showed some team attendants warming footballs in front of heaters — presumably at the behest of a quarterback. There was no scandal for “tampering.” There was not even an investigation. You know what kind of edict the NFL issued in that case? A reminder. It sent a memo that softening the ball on the sideline by warming it is not allowed.
At a minimum the Wells report is poor work, and the NFL may well have skewed it. Just consider how the report used referee Walt Anderson’s recollections. It accepts Anderson’s account as accurate when it comes to how pressurized the Patriots’ footballs were in pregame. It also accepts Anderson’s account when he said there were two gauges available, one with a logo on it that gave higher readings by almost 0.4.
But when Anderson says he used the gauge that gave the higher psi measurements, the Wells report suddenly treats Anderson as inaccurate on this point — and no other. For no apparent reason, Wells insists that Anderson must have used the other gauge, the one that gave lower readings, and which makes the Patriots look guilty.
As opposed to the higher gauge, which would put it in the realm of possibility that the footballs lost pressure by halftime due to the effects cold weather and the Ideal Gas Law.
Once you’ve read this part of the Wells report, the words it so often employs — “more probable than not” and “likely” — begin to take on a pernicious tone.
The NFL created its own mischief here. It wrote a rule that says each team can use a dozen of their own balls, and left it to the teams to inflate them, without providing any sort of regulation or consistent enforcement. Now, all of a sudden, what a year ago was the subject of a mere memo has become the subject of a months-long million-dollar game of Gotcha. Why?
Don’t tell me it’s because Tom Brady didn’t turn over his cell phone. Wells had all of the phone records and texts between Brady and equipment manager John Jastremski, and there was no communication at all with locker room attendant Jim McNally. The records suggest Brady’s not withholding; he’s just a union man who objects to the precedent of giving his private phone to a commissioner who comes on like J. Edgar Hoover.
And here again, Goodell is practicing selective punishment. Brett Favre didn’t turn his cell over either, in a far more unpalatable case over sexual harassment in the workplace. Know what Goodell gave him? A $50,000 fine. With no suspension.
The commissioner needed a big case to restore his authority and prestige, after a series of judicial embarrassments. Federal judge David Doty reversed him on Adrian Peterson’s suspension. Arbitrator Barbara Jones overturned him (and found him not credible) for suspending Ray Rice twice for the same offense. And former commissioner Paul Tagliabue issued a stunning rebuke in the New Orleans Saints BountyGate case, when he not only reversed player suspensions but found a pattern of “arbitrary” as well “selective, ad hoc or inconsistent” punishments by Goodell.
The guess here is that Goodell’s support and respect among owners was eroded badly after he mishandled each of these cases and turned them into months-long scandals that undermined public trust in the league office. DeflateGate is nothing more than a bid to reconsolidate his power. But it’s an overreach as usual, and whatever Goodell gained in the short term may be his undoing in the long term. There was an initial jolt of gratification that Goodell took the much-loathed Patriots and their owner Bob Kraft down a peg. But after it will come a more rational examination of his conduct, and the flawed content of the Wells report. And with that, distrust.
Redskins columnist, thinking clearly:
In trying to restore his authority through Deflategate, Roger Goodell undermined his credibility
By Sally Jenkins Columnist May 21 at 2:11 PM
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell predetermined guilt in DeflateGate; that’s clear now. He has smeared Tom Brady and the New England Patriots without proper evidence or a competent investigation, and turned an unimportant misdemeanor into a damaging scandal, as part of a personal power play to shore up his flagging authority. In other cases, he just looked inept. In this one, he looks devious.
Wednesday night at the NFL owners meetings in San Francisco, Goodell as much as admitted that the Wells report is incomplete, despite the fact that it took four months, cost millions in legal fees, and was supposed to be comprehensive. After all, the league used it to levy historically harsh penalties against Brady and the Patriots, claiming they deflated footballs in the AFC championship game. Nevertheless, Goodell opened the door to walking it back, saying he wants to talk personally to Brady, who has appealed his four-game suspension.
“I look forward to hearing directly from Tom if there is new information or there is information that can be helpful to us in getting this right,” Goodell said.
Now this is the height of disingenuousness. Because we already know the Wells report missed crucial information and didn’t consider important facts. Ted Wells either overlooked or ignored crucial text messages, he used a firm with a reputation for bending science to fit predetermined conclusions, and he cherry-picked the memory of an NFL referee. But that’s not all. The Wells report left completely unexamined the fact that the NFL has never once considered the inflation of footballs to be a matter of great integrity or competitive advantage, before now.
And this is where Brady can blow the commissioner out of a courtroom. And perhaps out of his job.
League history makes it obvious that Goodell is practicing selective enforcement, purely for his own purpose. The NFL rules simply state that footballs should be inflated within a range of 12.5 to 13.5 pounds per square inch. For nearly a decade it has let each team provide a dozen of its own balls, and let quarterbacks choose them according to preference and feel, and to fiddle with the pressure, without penalty. Aaron Rodgers has said he tells his equipment guys to over-inflate the ball, and see if the refs catch it.
That the league has never particularly enforced standards is evident in a hilarious section in which the Wells report eats its own tail. According to Wells, in a game between the Patriots and Jets it was discovered that the refs had inflated the balls to 16 psi. Brady got upset when he found them hard to handle. That’s how uneven ball inflation in the NFL is, and how weak the Wells report is. The only firm evidence that Brady ever had a conversation with anyone about ball pressure comes in this instance, when the ball was wildly over-inflated to 16 psi — by the league’s own refs.
What’s more, messing with the ball has been treated as a misdemeanor in other cases. In a very cold 2014 game between the Carolina Panthers and Minnesota Vikings, sideline cameras showed some team attendants warming footballs in front of heaters — presumably at the behest of a quarterback. There was no scandal for “tampering.” There was not even an investigation. You know what kind of edict the NFL issued in that case? A reminder. It sent a memo that softening the ball on the sideline by warming it is not allowed.
At a minimum the Wells report is poor work, and the NFL may well have skewed it. Just consider how the report used referee Walt Anderson’s recollections. It accepts Anderson’s account as accurate when it comes to how pressurized the Patriots’ footballs were in pregame. It also accepts Anderson’s account when he said there were two gauges available, one with a logo on it that gave higher readings by almost 0.4.
But when Anderson says he used the gauge that gave the higher psi measurements, the Wells report suddenly treats Anderson as inaccurate on this point — and no other. For no apparent reason, Wells insists that Anderson must have used the other gauge, the one that gave lower readings, and which makes the Patriots look guilty.
As opposed to the higher gauge, which would put it in the realm of possibility that the footballs lost pressure by halftime due to the effects cold weather and the Ideal Gas Law.
Once you’ve read this part of the Wells report, the words it so often employs — “more probable than not” and “likely” — begin to take on a pernicious tone.
The NFL created its own mischief here. It wrote a rule that says each team can use a dozen of their own balls, and left it to the teams to inflate them, without providing any sort of regulation or consistent enforcement. Now, all of a sudden, what a year ago was the subject of a mere memo has become the subject of a months-long million-dollar game of Gotcha. Why?
Don’t tell me it’s because Tom Brady didn’t turn over his cell phone. Wells had all of the phone records and texts between Brady and equipment manager John Jastremski, and there was no communication at all with locker room attendant Jim McNally. The records suggest Brady’s not withholding; he’s just a union man who objects to the precedent of giving his private phone to a commissioner who comes on like J. Edgar Hoover.
And here again, Goodell is practicing selective punishment. Brett Favre didn’t turn his cell over either, in a far more unpalatable case over sexual harassment in the workplace. Know what Goodell gave him? A $50,000 fine. With no suspension.
The commissioner needed a big case to restore his authority and prestige, after a series of judicial embarrassments. Federal judge David Doty reversed him on Adrian Peterson’s suspension. Arbitrator Barbara Jones overturned him (and found him not credible) for suspending Ray Rice twice for the same offense. And former commissioner Paul Tagliabue issued a stunning rebuke in the New Orleans Saints BountyGate case, when he not only reversed player suspensions but found a pattern of “arbitrary” as well “selective, ad hoc or inconsistent” punishments by Goodell.
The guess here is that Goodell’s support and respect among owners was eroded badly after he mishandled each of these cases and turned them into months-long scandals that undermined public trust in the league office. DeflateGate is nothing more than a bid to reconsolidate his power. But it’s an overreach as usual, and whatever Goodell gained in the short term may be his undoing in the long term. There was an initial jolt of gratification that Goodell took the much-loathed Patriots and their owner Bob Kraft down a peg. But after it will come a more rational examination of his conduct, and the flawed content of the Wells report. And with that, distrust.
Jim Kelly says no doubt Brady knew:
“Oh, there’s no doubt,” Kelly told the panel of We Need To Talk. “There’s no way that an equipment manager in the National Football League is going to do something to the football without the greatest quarterback ever to play knowing.
“You do something like that, you’re going to get caught. And Tom didn’t need to do it.”
“Oh, there’s no doubt,” Kelly told the panel of We Need To Talk. “There’s no way that an equipment manager in the National Football League is going to do something to the football without the greatest quarterback ever to play knowing.
“You do something like that, you’re going to get caught. And Tom didn’t need to do it.”
OS to post a "thorough" scientific examination from a random blogger as a legitimate source in 3......2.......1.......
wrong yet again, but I am happy to quote, verbatim, the most-read NFL writer on our planet, Mike Florio.
I am sure that you will ignore it, though.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...ard-from-commissioner-on-recusal-request-yet/
Mike Florio said:
Mike is correct except for one word in the last sentence above. The word "almost" should be omitted.
7 footballs were exactly in the right range, 2 were too high by 0.3 psi, and two were too low by 0.3 psi. Given the accuracy of the gauge (+/- 0.4 psi), within experimental error every single football was as the pressure expected.
Do you look for a murderer when there is no dead body? No footballs were deflated. Period.
This one is even juicier, same source, the most-read NFL writer on planet Earth:
Wise or unwise, once false PSI info was leaked to ESPN, the NFL's agenda became to find the Patriots and Tom Brady guilty of tampering.
Wise or unwise, once false PSI info was leaked to ESPN, the NFL's agenda became to find the Patriots and Tom Brady guilty of tampering.
Rush Limbaugh is the most listened to radio host in the nation, but that doesn't make him right about anything.
Only thing Florio does right is root for the Vikings.
Mike Florio works for NBC and is accountable to that network's standards of journalism. On this particular matter, being an actual lawyer, he has extra credibility. Plus to my knowledge, he has NEVER been favorable to the Patriots in the past.
Rush Limbaugh works for Rush Limbaugh and is accountable to nobody.
Rush Limbaugh works for Rush Limbaugh and is accountable to nobody.
So was Brian Williams, dipshit.
As expected, no one will comment on Florio's conclusions. At all. You won't even READ it if it does not fit your agenda.
When you can't respond intelligently AT ALL, just post a profane remark.
COLTISH.
Lasht night? WTF? Nice work, douche.
COLTISH.
Lasht night? WTF? Nice work, douche.
Don't need to read any opinions of other people. I'll stick to facts. Pats found guilty. Pats no appeal, confirms guilt. All the rest is irrelevant, like you.
I guess in addition to science, irony is another subject about which you are quite ignorant.
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How phacking stupid are you? You believe that the equipment guy was referred to as the "deflator" because of weight loss? It wasn't gonna go to trial because then there would be discovery and a level of scrutiny that Kraft and Metro Tommy wouldn't have survived. Not please, STFU. Nobody gives to $hits about your stupidity. It's over. Opinions, like yours and a dipchit sports writer are irrelevant. Please, please, please borrow a gun from a yank friend or suck on a tailpipe or something but just end it. The world will be a better place. You must be in marketing.
Oh there's only one agenda that anyone still posting in this thread has at this point and that agenda is:
We always knew you had ghey fantasies of Brady! I bet that's a weight off your shoulders.
You're such a 'mo! You make Cap look like Jeter .
You can still pretend you're a hetero scientist if you want. We won't tell.
