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

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.

i can't believe how thick everyone is about this word, they need to deflate.

When the NFC Championship Game ended abruptly in overtime, someone in the Officials’ Locker Room sitting area said “we’re back on.” Mr. McNally then stood up, put the two bags of footballs on his shoulders, and proceeded past all of these NFL personnel and game officials (see pgs. 54-55) to the door of the Officials’ Locker Room sitting room (described in the report as a “large sitting room” — pg. 54). This was not some clandestine departure — it was in clear view of all those League officials. Once the footballs are taken to the field they are to be taken to the area adjacent to the replay booth. The outdoor security camera shows that is exactly what Mr. McNally did. Anyone actually concerned about the location of the game footballs could simply have checked that location. The security video shows Mr. Anderson coming out to the field and going there. Not surprisingly, he found Mr. McNally was there with the bags of footballs.

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

yeah bingo, this whole thing has been massively entertaining if only because of how much ink has been spilled over a few missing psis

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

actually I would believe that Brady and those two other guys were the only people who knew. I don't think it's a conspiracy.

that would still be a conspiracy between Brady and those two other guys, though

this is all Pete Carroll's fault, really

the pats cant be serious with this "weight loss" thing right

wait...who am i kidding, they totally can

I am beside myself over here

iced tea and cocoa, in the pats locker room

tell me who's that a-writin'
Tom the ball deflator
tell me who's that a-writin'
Tom the ball deflator
tell me who's that a-writin'
Tom the ball deflator
let a little out before the game

at this point i think the pats and brady are innocent and they should get their draft picks/$$ back and the suspension overturned and an apology

they're going to have a tough time though, because goodell and the league admitting they are wrong just doesn't happen, and because wells constructed a narrative and narrative is a powerful thing. he had to work pretty hard to do this by cherry picking text messages from the offseason and road games, deciding there was some scheme among these guys to trade memorabilia for sneakily tampering with footballs complete with evil mastermind Deflator nickname. brady was right not to turn over his phone or messages because no good would come of it - wells is already building a narrative and he's going to be able to take something out of context and use it against you.

i don't believe it because there's no real evidence the footballs were tampered with in the first place, plus two of these guys are not the brightest and texted about everything including trying to deal in memorabilia and unauthorized sales of season tickets, on company owned phones, and there's still not much for wells to work with. sure, after jan 2015 we live in a world where .5 psi in footballs is an international news story worthy of all this time and attention, but prior to this, what i can't get past is that nobody really cared including the league and its officials. if these two equipment guys had a scheme why wouldn't there be really obvious texts saying what they were doing? and why would you go to all the trouble of sneaking around and expect compensation when all you'd have to actually do is be like 'dude let some air out of the footballs ok' because it wasn't a thing to anyone - you would probably just do it on the sideline in plain sight because nbd

I don't think it's possible to stress enough that goodell does not want to go after his paymaster. he does not want to tarnish the league's most marketable face. and the fact that this is the issue where his royal dipshit the commish has to flex muscles is kind of hideous given recent domestic violence issues, but it's gonna happen. the penalties may be halved but they will not disappear completely

it doesn't ultimately tarnish the many wins, aside from in some people's minds the AFC championship, and honestly as we've all said they would've won that game regardless. imo they should chuckle as they write the check for the fine, suffer the (likely to be reduced) consequences and go back to what should be the most important thing, winning football games. kraft is making it seem as if the brand is more important than a superb owl win by bothering with this counterattack.

brady suspended for plucking a superb owl

exactly it was already superb he didn't need to fuck with it

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/ngWjN71D.zhRAlW1W4zVrg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NQ--/http%3A//l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/sports/2015-05-13/0c336b60-f96f-11e4-bedf-fdb4c319c835_Screen-Shot-2015-05-13-at-8-51-20-AM.png

"p.s. ur suspended lol"

50 yrs feels like the rt amt of time, end football after this season imo

wrap it up folks

okay lol

could be a bid by the robber baron kraft to maybe get a reduced suspension for st. tom as a quid pro quo but if it's not, like if he's just giving up, wtf was that barstool sports-level website bullshit about lol

i think with the way the league is set up, there are few/no options for kraft here. you really can't sue the league

brady is different of course and can still appeal and then go to court.. greg bedard tweeted that this didn't include any deal on brady's suspension but that's what they say.. i have to think they'll cut it down at least

still think the whole thing is garbage btw and completely unjustified