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

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

you /can/ remain a fan of the team and accept the notion that idk just maybe they sorta did a dumb thing that was against the rules, you know, and also acknowledge that maybe some of those rules are overly stiff and that league punishments are on a similarly arbitrarily dictated scale...

wtf was that barstool sports-level website bullshit about lol

my theory is that kraft and co figured out that everyone had already chosen sides and wasn't going to change their minds--that site was for fans and supporters pretty much.

i really don't think they did it. too many things don't add up to me - the scientific evidence not proving any tampering, the idea that there was a scheme to have these guys sneakily go to all the trouble to let out a really insignificant amount of air, the idea that you'd need to have a scheme when it was a minor issue in the rulebook, the idea that before the AFC title game a guy would duck into a bathroom and hastily tamper with 12 footballs in a bag in 90 seconds (not worth the risk of effing it up)..

But aside from my opinions on the report, I also don't think they did it because it doesn't make sense that kraft and belichick would have been so insistent that there was no wrongdoing, repeatedly, and kraft/the organization would have continued to state this even after the investigation report was released and push it as far as releasing that whole response and emails and everything. Also because the Pats beat reporters I've been reading for like 8-10 years, who've been covering the team for longer than that, were also quite skeptical and had never had any reason to think brady had lied to them, which was the same thing kraft said - brady had never lied to him. It doesn't make sense to me that these people would lie and insist they did nothing wrong over this if it were true. When the spygate thing happened the pats admitted exactly what they did.

i kind of feel like the whole thing can be attributed to a failure of the nfl, leaking incorrect information about the football psi and the investigation early on.. once they screwed that up and didn't correct the record and had it blow up into a media firestorm, somebody had to be guilty. this shouldn't happen, but it did. i guess other teams and players have found this out before with goodell as commissioner, that the process is driven by media and public perception and is pretty unfair and the penalties are arbitrary with little/no options for appeal, and the agreements in place keep it that way and the owners need to look in the mirror if they have a problem with it because they voted for it (and this is what kraft gets for backing goodell all this time)

i think this whole thing is seriously overinflated, and i really don't care if they, or any other team, did this, or still do this.

but...

t doesn't make sense that kraft and belichick would have been so insistent that there was no wrongdoing, repeatedly, and kraft/the organization would have continued to state this even after the investigation report was released

seriously?

the Pats beat reporters I've been reading for like 8-10 years, who've been covering the team for longer than that, were also quite skeptical and had never had any reason to think brady had lied to them

and, um, seriously?

"i know he was convicted, your honor, but he still says he didn't do it. and he never, ever lies. nope, not him. he has never lied to anybody about anything. he doesn't even lie about snap counts at the line of scrimmage. surely if he had cheated, he would have told you he cheated, because that's the kind of awesome guy that he is. so i am sure you will see fit to dismiss all charges, even though he has already been convicted. thank you, your honor."

the pats counterscientist for their anti wells report thing was a guy working on a project bankrolled by kraft, bought and paid for, just like kraft thought goodell was bought and paid for (which for a long time he was, I mean he destroyed the spygate tapes and while I don't think square was that big a deal one expects you'd keep the evidence for posterity)

*dont think spygate was

fuckin phones

if kraft wanted to go full on against the NFL he would have, but it would require a heel-turn away from the league party line, which kraft clearly is just not prepared or not willing to take. he ain't bout that al davis life, no sirree. corporate ayn-randian exceptionalists usually are not.

um spygate was def fuckin phones

a somewhat overblown scandal and an iphone procreating is def a scary thought

xpost -- as for am i serious -- yeah sure am. it doesn't square to me that brady would look at the coach and owner of the team where he's played his entire professional career, and lie to their faces over something like this. it's not worth it. being a hyper competitive, short tempered, kind of obnoxious jerk on the field who yells at guys and complains to the refs is fine, but straight up lying to the coach and owner does not seem in character whatsoever. i could be wrong but to change my mind there would need to be a smoking gun or for brady to personally admit he did something

only thing i could speculate is maybe 1) outside the specific scope of the investigation (tampering in the AFC title game) and unknown to brady, there was something going on with the preparation of footballs in the past that the pats don't want revealed or 2) some tampering was done on some occasions in the past (but not in the AFC title game) based on a very narrow reading of the rules under which they thought it was acceptable, which it would do no good to explain today because the public wouldn't believe you.

one of the NE beat reporters (curran maybe?) mentioned recently that not all the spygate tapes were not destroyed, only some of them, and that they were incredibly boring

is it conceivable to you that a successful capitalist businessman who wears ugly button-down shirts like kraft would lie? i am just guessing here, but i am going to guess that successful capitalist businessmen in many fields lie quite routinely as part of their day-to-day duties.

i'm too focused on the condescension to be able to remember whether or not, in my life, it has ever occurred to me that a business guy might lie

eh forget about it. not worth it

https://usatthebiglead.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/sanchez31.gif

i'm too focused on the condescension to be able to remember whether or not, in my life, it has ever occurred to me that a business guy might lie

― seriously, THIS GUY (daria-g), Tuesday, May 19, 2015 9:31 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/ondGXtr.gif