here's a pats thread for everyone to talk about patritos shit because nobody else cares

r u kidding they LOVE it

he's only untouchable because there isn't a better QB available for less money. i was trying to think of the last quote i read on this & it was brady's father telling reporters before the super bowl that he fully expected things in NE to end badly, eventually

kraft cares a LOT about the value of the franchise. if most of the public decides the pats are shady cheaters because of this he definitely cares

as sports crimes go, i'd equate throwing underinflated footballs with a baseball pitcher throwing spitballs.

there isn't a better QB available for less money

there, that's better.

and i'm just saying all this because i don't believe the nfl finding fault with brady here. if kraft/belichick do something to indicate brady is also to blame for this, then i'd believe it

nah you're right. brady or rodgers best QB

Kraft:

"Despite our conviction that there was no tampering with footballs, it was our intention to accept any discipline levied by the league. Today’s punishment, however, far exceeded any reasonable expectation. It was based completely on circumstantial rather than hard or conclusive evidence.

"We are humbled by the support the New England Patriots have received from our fans throughout the world. We recognize our fans’ concerns regarding the NFL’s penalties and share in their disappointment in how this one-sided investigation was handled, as well as the dismissal of the scientific evidence supported by the Ideal Gas Law in the final report.

"Tom Brady has our unconditional support. Our belief in him has not wavered."

B-)

need a youtube with robert kraft explaining the ideal gas law

gotta say this is pretty funny

do other team fanbases genuinely kind of adore their oligarch owners of late or is it just the pats and kraft

like I don't see the average cowboys fan (and I know quite a few) being like "wow jerry jones what a great dude"

White, media-friendly superstar suspended for allegedly cheating. WHAT AN OUTRAGE, amirite

I don't think anyone here is that outraged morbs chill

if u bring the rings home sports fans will love u regardless if ur an owner player coach trainer whatever

*checks mets score* oh that's why morbs is mad

i'm going more by the reaction of the Great Unwashed

xp I guess it's just not something I personally think about much, like I attribute that to coaches/managers and GMs more than those who write the checks

i don't get upset by one of 162 games, sloth

vs the crapshoot that are most NFL playoff games

do other team fanbases genuinely kind of adore their oligarch owners of late or is it just the pats and kraft

the rooneys are pretty revered in pittsburgh, even as the generations pass from their humble beginnings. on the spectrum of nfl owners, i feel like they're okay even though they evidently support goodell

'the spectrum of nfl owners' is pretty fucked up tho

I recall there being a sort of cult around al davis, like a "he's our demonic asshole" thing but he is obvs long gone and it did not carry over to his horribly haired spawn

fuck this, a first-round pick is a complete outrage

New mascot PerVNeRT the Patriot

Davis is one of the most important dudes in NFL history, so we cut him some slack in his tracksuit years.

He stood up to the commish when no one else would. He was the Bill Simmons of his era.

People in Oakland talk about the "tuck rule" game fucking every day, by the way. It is maddening.

http://deadspin.com/the-patriots-war-against-the-nfl-has-spilled-online-1703915895?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

Of course Kraft, one of Goodell’s strongest allies, could have smothered this in the crib years ago. Starting from Spygate, Goodell has been allowed to wield disciplinary powers like his big swinging dick, with only the ineffectual NFLPA opposing his arbitrary and publicity-driven punishments. And not one owner has publicly stood up for another. Not when Tom Benson lost coaches, players, money, and draft picks for a ginned up bounty scandal. Not when Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder were docked $46 million in cap space for spending “too much” in a year without a salary cap. Those were apparently acceptable to Kraft—or not worth weakening the commissioner—because they didn’t concern him. (“First they came for the Saints, and I did not speak out...”) Now the chickens are roosting, and they’re here for Tom Brady, and only now does Kraft apparently see a problem with having empowered the commissioner to be judge, jury, and executioner.

It’s more than a little disingenuous for Bob Kraft to act surprised that he’s lost control of the monster he helped create.

feel like the kraftman should've realized putting goodell in his pocket would mean that goodell would have to occasionally pretend he was not in said pocket by enacting an ultimately excessive punishment for a fairly mundane rule violation, seems like an expected cost of doing business

like how corrupt cops occasionally had to arrest mafia soldiers, its just how it works

feel like four games at the start of the season, even if you lose two or three of them, is really not that big a deal with this team and this division. the issue for the patritos has always been how well they're playing in january and february, not how well they're playing in september.

you're right, the real competitive balance issue is the draft picks and i am at a loss as to how that punishment can be justified

i think if the likely appeal is successful maybe they reduce it to one lost pick rather than two?

yeah docking a 1st rounder is harsh considering that it seems like only Tom, Bird, and the other guy knew about this

http://www.sharpfootballanalysis.com/blog/2015/the-new-england-patriots-mysteriously-became-fumble-proof-in-2007

wut, me worry
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CE57eqcWYAAK7YV.jpg

someone on twitter made the good point that if jimmy g plays week 1 there is a reasonable chance he is the best starting qb in the division by default.

xxp - http://regressing.deadspin.com/why-those-statistics-about-the-patriots-fumbles-are-mos-1681805710

tannehill ain't bad/is likely to improve, but even so...that's not saying much, like at all, so i would not be particularly comforted if i were a fan!

him being the best in the AFC east is not saying much, that is

it's good there's no way he'd have to face miami bc suh would adore the chance to rip jimmy g's spine in half and eat the surrounding flesh, he'll have to make to with touchdown tom

*make do

haters gonna hate:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/fivethirtyeight-dissects-the-deflategate-report/

benm: I think the much-maligned study by Warren Sharp about the Patriots having a low fumble rate should be taken more seriously, for sure. I mean, though it had flaws, at a very minimum that author correctly identified that the Patriots fumble rate has been absurdly small. I did my own calculations using binomial and Poisson models and found the same. <snip>
But the fun part is when you get all Bayesian about it. As I said at the time, the existence of the Patriots’ extremely low fumble rate, as a Bayesian matter, makes it much more likely that the Patriots were intentionally cheating – even though the link between fumble rates and inflation levels is only speculative. That’s the beauty of Bayesianism. But it gets better: Now that it seems likely that the Patriots were violating the rules to gain an advantage, the fact that they also had an extremely low fumble rate makes it more likely that the relationship between inflation levels and fumbling is real – and more likely that the Patriots have materially benefited from their cheating.
https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/pasted_image_at_2015_05_06_11_58_am.png?w=610

i'd equate throwing underinflated footballs with a baseball pitcher throwing spitballs. ... as every pitch he throws during the seventh game of a league championship series.

that 538 thing is so stupid it makes my head spin. i mean, ignore the fact that one of the issues is that the dataset itself is bullshit, and read what the guy wrote. after waving exciting words like poisson and bayesian around like a magic trick, his actual conclusion is that, although there is no evidence for causality, the existence of coincidence implies causality. it is basically the most wrong thing a "data journalist" can write. maybe the guy has already lost his job, we can only hope.

Sorry, coming in to this late, but doesn't it seem like under-inflated balls would help more with dropped passes than fumbles?

xp lost his job lol dude are you serious

it is a football team, its poor besieged saint sebastian is being hated on and the organization is being mocked, partially w/ good reason partially in a way thats going too far...

somehow you will survive, we all will

one of the guys in the 538 convo is a pats fan and he's chill with it!

the reason I stopped weighing in on Deflategate is because, as a Boston resident who hates the Boston sports teams, it was becoming quickly apparent that very few people around me shared my incredulous delight at how ridiculous this entire thing had become and I was in danger of losing friends if I talked about it

pats is serious, man

i'd equate throwing underinflated footballs with a baseball pitcher throwing spitballs.

... as every pitch he throws during the seventh game of a league championship series.

well, yes, if he were a spitball pitcher, and if he and his team were good enough to get to the seventh game of a league championship series, that's exactly what he would try to do.

xp yea as someone who also lives here and is into the sox and celtics (bc those were my folks' teams) but not the pats (for that and other reasons), it's been a colorful time around here in the bars and on twitter

it baffles me - you'd be hard-pressed to find a sox fan, myself included, who won't be like, "yeaaaaah manny probably did some PEDs after they were ruled illegal and ortiz definitely did before the ban and maybe after."

but right now, of my pats fan friends, exactly one of them has been "they probably did some dumb shit they didn't need to do" and the rest are in full-on homerific "it's a CONSPIRACY" mode