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

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

but how many sox fans are like, ortiz should be suspended for a quarter of a season and the sox should forfeit a first round draft pick?

also, i don't think anyone would be repping hard for magic johnson and walt frazier if they were PED users, but no one seems to care that magic's lakers were ball inflaters and fraziers knicks were ball deflaters. and they were/are not alone.

well also keep in mind that some of this is blowback from the Pats having a deranged murderer on their roster

if manny had been caught straight up during his sox tenure, i wouldn't have liked a huge suspension but would've grinned and bore it, not allege that it was a conspiracy of #haters jealous the sox and their #rangz

and im on record upthread as saying the draft pick part of the penalty was too steep, thats a fair complaint afaic

xp *jealous of the

i don't think it's unfair to call about the obvious homerism here, and the patriots attract that just like they attract deranged murderers (are they any other kind?) and ball deflaters. but i also think it's kind of obvious why a reaction to balls being slightly underinflated would be markedly different from the reaction to players using steroids.

i don't think it's unfair to call OUT...

fair point. better example would be the clay buchholz pine tar rumors. they weren't proven, but if they had been, i would be like, alright this sucks but the rules are the rules and the argument that they are dumb and arbitrary has to be dealt with elsewhere, serve the penalty, come back & make em pay from the mound

that's a fair point too. and that's pretty much how i feel. i think the accusations were overblown, i think the investigation was ridiculously overblown, and i think the punishment is probably deserved (even if awkwardly delivered).

(and, yeah, not a fan of the draft pick penalty either! but i figure what ends up happening is they get to show off jimmy g for four games, which is enough make him valuable enough to eventually trade him for a pretty good draft pick in return.)

worst case scenario: they lose four straight, brady comes back and they win almost all of the rest and prob at very least make the wild card and its off to the races from there, bc even with the other AFC east teams' free agent acquisitions they all have sizable holes that even a touchdown tomless version of the pats doesn't really have

well also keep in mind that some of this is blowback from the Pats having a deranged murderer on their roster

I would guess most of it is from Spygate

ha I forgot about Spygate

pats is serious, man

― DJP, Wednesday, May 13, 2015 3:23 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah as a pats fan its weird to me that ppl cant enjoy this more especially since the cheating occurred during a season in which the patriots won the superbowl, like its a good opportunity to gloat if anything, but also i have already come to terms with the fact that football is inherently evil and shd be outlawed

well, yeah, there's always that

i'm totally cool with fans who are fine w/ the team being heels (the lagoon perspective), especially given the inherent outsized absurdity of american football which should naturally have heels and faces (and sort of does but not all the way), but i feel like a lot of the fanbase got carried away with the idea of the way and the system that kraft pushed to great success, and view the team as more noble and #american than 30 bald eagles flying at once

its so crazy to me that ppl believe in stuff like that?

tbf you can't expect too much from ppl made of straw

lol yes im totally inventing those people, no way they exist

um tyranny of low expectations much

the idea of #ways and shit like that used to be more of a baseball thing and still totally is a baseball thing for numerous teams, and tbf the pats are by no means the only NFL team to peddle such ideas on an organizational level! but it is done on such a massive scale for a lot of reasons

i feel like a lot of the fanbase got carried away with the idea of the way and the system that kraft pushed to great success, and view the team as more noble and #american than 30 bald eagles flying at once

have 30 bald eagles flying at once ever intercepted a russell wilson pass at the goal line in the waning seconds of a super bowl? no they have not. case closed.

(cont. xp) plenty of which have to do with the marketability of brady and the obvious success/strategic genius of bill

lol no only undrafted free agents who will probably be cut in training camp for obscurantist bill reasons or traded for a 7th round pick xp

i haven't read the report or basically anything about this but the belief that brady and belichick weren't 100% in on this seems pretty naive to me

lag∞n otm, which you may have noticed is an anagram of tom

one thing i feel like ppl dont appreciate enough in all this is how handsome and cool tom brady is

brady is handsome in the way a man who knows for a fact that he is handsome is handsome

anyway, whatever. pats won, no one deep down truly thinks that psi had anything to do with it, and presumably bb will give his inclination to run up the score even freer rein

~gronk flex~

ffs this isn't complicated, the psychology of the average pats fan is that they are a person who loves tom brady, the way one would love a kind, generous, and decent relative.

pats fan reaction to this is literally how you would feel if someone wronged a member of your family

i only feel that way when ppl make fun of his uggs

xp I get that part, obviously. what I don't get is people literally shouting conspiracy and they are not joking! ted wells doesn't have a grudge against touchdown tom, and goodell is literally a robert kraft employee

and has been, more or less openly, since he became commissioner

i think conspiracy is too strong but there is a cast of characters involved in this thing who strongly give the impression that the patriots hurt their feelings

ffs this isn't complicated, the psychology of the average pats fan is that they are a person who loves tom brady

tru; as a steelers fan i have more experience in the semantics that separate quarterback from team/fandom

personally i think what's been happening all along is that the patriots prepared what you might call 'deflated' footballs (ie not measured exactly but targeted on the low end of the range and judged by feel not psi) and nobody cared including the officials who didn't adjust them because the refs and the league didn't care either
it's like aaron rodgers trying to sneak overinflated footballs past the refs
if you prepare them that way and the refs don't do anything to adjust them before the game because nobody, including the nfl, actually much cares, that's not breaking the rules and that's probably how it was for a long time

at some point another club decides to complain and/or the officials way overcompensate by putting a lot of air back in the pats footballs before a jets game. and brady is an asshole boss and yells at the equipment guy and looks up the rule and tells them to make sure the refs read the rule book and don't let this happen etc. brady didn't know anything more

i don't know why i've spent any mental energy on this other than i can't square kraft continuing to strongly defend brady plus brady insisting he didn't break the rules (but choosing his words carefully) with the idea that brady is guilty of what the wells report says. why would you back yourself into a corner over something this petty instead of just coming clean if you really did it? that doesn't make sense. so i tend to think brady didn't do the specific thing the wells report says, but generally had the equipment guys prepare 'deflated' footballs which usually got past the officials because no one cared - and explaining this complicated thing to the public is not going to help any

and i don't believe there's an anti-pats conspiracy (a conspiracy is too complicated) but i do think some people took the opportunity to deliberately leak damaging and inaccurate information to create a media firestorm during the runup to the super bowl and blow this thing way out of proportion. i also think goodell handled it incredibly poorly because if the nfl approach to the psi 'rule' up until that point was ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and the penalty for previous infractions ranged from 'ok guys knock it off' to a $25K fine, there's no way it merits a multi-million-dollar three-month forensic investigation

i should quit paying attention to the whole thing but i am fascinated by the absurdity

no way it doesn't get reduced on appeal

to 1-2 games

p. good summary xp

i should quit paying attention to the whole thing but i am fascinated by the absurdity

the football fan's lament

what you might call 'deflated' footballs

tbh this is what i call balls when a person glossed "the deflator" takes custody of game certified balls and they later show up consistently below certification.

yeah the "consistently below certification" thing is really the rub tho since that's still entirely speculative based on the information available.

i don't have time to read this: http://wellsreportcontext.com/ but i am sure it is v good.

omg

The report does not address whether one minute and 40 is consistent with the time that it takes a gentleman to enter a bathroom, relieve himself, wash his hands, and leave. In fact, it is.

is the gentleman drying his hands after he washes them? that is crucial, and that isn't clear!

yah it's pretty entertaining:

Mr. Jastremski would sometimes work out and bulk up — he is a slender guy and his goal was to get to 200 pounds. Mr. McNally is a big fellow and had the opposite goal: to lose weight. “Deflate” was a term they used to refer to losing weight.