I guess it helps to be the Patriots and not the Browns ...

Robert Craft probably has video footage of Rodger Goodell in a massage parlor.

j/c:

I am not buying the "NFL loves the Pats" thing. They suspended Brady for some BS.

What kills me is how Josh Gordon continues to screw up, removes himself from the situation while lying his ass off, and then keeps getting reinstated. The same crap happened here.

Imagine blatently cheating in the AFC Championship and getting caught.

The Pats should be named after Patrick Starfish.

Now imagine they didn’t cheat and still got punished.

J/C

Looking at the Pats roster, Gordon is a needed part. He will allow guys like Edelman, White, Burkhead to do their thing

Josh Gordon doesn't wear orange and brown; I don't care about him. I was annoyed by the reinstatement because of Goodell's new-found sense of equanimity when it comes to Josh Gordon, a multiple/repeat offender, after basically throwing the book at him every single chance he got when Gordon was a Brown. Gordon played 41 games in 6+ years here while missing nearly 60 games, but its heart-warming to know that he has a chance at his first full season since 2012 as a Patriot.

He must be out of cash again. He will come back just as he did here, only to leave again. He didn't have to go thru training camp, so I sure he might just stay a little longer this time.

I always liked Josh, until the video of him laughing at Hue saying they were going to let him go. It changed my whole perception of him. I bought the whole story pushed about him being a humble good guy. I followed him on social media, and the perception the team presented of him, didn't match.

I don't wish him any harm, but I don't wish him well either. He stuck it to the Browns after all they did for him. In my eyes, he is an ungrateful arse.

Imagine blatently cheating in the AFC Championship and getting caught.

The Pats should be named after Patrick Starfish.

Josh Gordon doesn't wear orange and brown; I don't care about him. I was annoyed by the reinstatement because of Goodell's new-found sense of equanimity when it comes to Josh Gordon, a multiple/repeat offender, after basically throwing the book at him every single chance he got when Gordon was a Brown. Gordon played 41 games in 6+ years here while missing nearly 60 games, but its heart-warming to know that he has a chance at his first full season since 2012 as a Patriot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflategate

https://yourteamcheats.com/NE

https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/gallery/the-dirtiest-teams-in-the-nfl-ranked-from-no-1-to-no-32-101816

Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.

Deflategate (2015)

TEAM: The New England Patriots

SUMMARY: Immediately after the Indianapolis Colts were blown out (again) by the Patriots, this time in the 2015 AFC Championship game, Colts reporter Bob Kravitz broke a story that the NFL was investigating the Patriots for using underinflated footballs in the game.

Soon afterwards, Chris Mortensen hastily reported, based upon a now-discredited leak from the league, that 11 of the Patriots' 12 game footballs were deflated 2 PSI below the 12.5 PSI minimum legal requirement (Mortensen finally removed his inaccurate tweet on August 4, 2015 -- 195 days after he posted it.)

Two weeks later, on the morning of the Super Bowl, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport corrected this information, reporting that just one of the 11 footballs was 2 PSI under the limit, while many were "just a few ticks under the [12.5 PSI] minimum."

According to ProFootballTalk, the one football that was 2 PSI under the limit was the ball intercepted by D’Qwell Jackson and taken to the Colts sideline and ultimately submitted to the NFL to launch an investigation. The NFL chose not to investigate whether the Colts intentionally manipulated that football before submitting it.

107 days later, NFL independent investigator special prosecutor Ted Wells gave up his search for concrete evidence and guessed that there was at least a 51% chance that the Patriots might have been involved in the deflation of the game footballs.

Facts, schmacts, who needs them? Do you just know in your hairy beer-gut that a team with the Patriots' spotty cheating history absolutely did this? This page is just for you. I think you'll like it.

UPDATE 1: On May 14, 2015 council for the New England Patriots issued a comprehensive rebuttal to the Wells Report. One significant point was that the Colts broke a written league rule when they tested the air pressure of the intercepted football during the game. The Wells Report never flagged that as an issue.

UPDATE 2: On May 21, Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post published the best Deflategate analysis to date showing how Goodell took an insignificant rule infraction and trumped it up to a franchise-smearing scandal to save his own hide.

Jenkins wrote:

"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."

UPDATE 3: On June 12, The New York Times published an op-ed titled "Deflating 'Deflategate'" which summarized an analysis of the Wells Report done by an independent think tank called the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

The AEI "On the Wells report" concluded:

"When we analyzed the data provided in the Wells report, we found that the Patriots balls declined by about the expected amount [ed. note: based on the Ideal Gas Law], while the Colts balls declined by less. In fact, the pressure of the Colts balls was statistically significantly higher than expected."

"This implies that the Colts balls sat in the warm room where they were to be measured — and thus increased in pressure — for almost the entirety of halftime before being measured."

"Logistically, the greater change in pressure in the Patriots footballs can be explained by the fact that sufficient time may have passed between halftime testing of the two teams’ balls for the Colts balls to warm significantly, effectively inflating them."

In early August, after all of the facts had been revealed, the league office leaks discredited and the not-really-independent Wells Report fully debunked by truly independent third party research organizations, ESPN's Skip Bayless had this to say:

[Tweet] More I hear, more I believe Goodell railroaded Tom Brady, framed him, used media to wrongly convict him in court of public opinion. Travesty


VICTIM: New England Patriots (This was nothing more than an NFL orchestrated hit-job on its premier franchise and GOAT QB)

PUNISHED? Yes

PUNISHMENT: After 107 days, 12 hours, 8 minutes and 7 seconds, NFL independent investigator special prosecutor Ted Wells speculated (after giving his "independent" report to the league to edit) that someone on the Patriots was "more probable than not" involved in the possible deflation of game football used in the first half of the AFC Championship game vs. the Colts, and quarterback Tom Brady was probably "at least generally aware" of this.

Wells reported that the Colts and the NFL had setup a premeditated sting operation on the Patriots which allowed the league time to test all 11 of the Patriots game footballs at halftime, but only left enough time to test 4 of the Colts balls. Interesting enough, one official found that 3 out of 4 of the Colts footballs were also underinflated to an illegal PSI, even though they had known about the sting beforehand.

On May 11, 2015, the NFL suspended Patriot quarterback Tom Brady for four games for failing to cooperate with the investigation (by not turning over contents of his personal phone) and for being "at least generally aware" of the "more probable than not" ball deflation that the Well report felt wasn't caused by the cold weather. The team was also fined one million dollars and docked their 2016 first round and 2017 fourth round picks.

Patriots' owner Robert Kraft responded to the announcement by expressing his and the team's full support of Brady and condemning the "one-sided report" and its "dismissal of the scientific evidence."

Brady announced his appeal of his suspension on May 14, 2015. Goodell, after decided that he would OBVIOUSLY be the best person to impartially handle the appeal of his completely fabricated case, upheld the suspension on July 28, 2015. On July 29 the NFLPA filed an appeal on behalf of Tom Brady in federal court.

UPDATE: On September 3, 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Berman issued a ruling that overturned the NFL’s four game suspension of quarterback Tom Brady. Berman's decision was premised upon several significant legal deficiencies in the NFL's case, including (A) inadequate notice to Brady of both his potential discipline (four-game suspension) and his alleged misconduct; (B) denial of the opportunity for Brady to examine one of two lead investigators, namely NFL Executive Vice President and General Counsel Jeff Pash; and (C) denial of equal access to investigative files, including witness interview notes.

NFL commissioner and former Jets public relations intern Roger Goodell (ego-bruised and unwilling to give up on his petty witch-hunt) filed paperwork to appeal Berman's decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In this case, unlike many other ball-manipulation cheats, the team did not admit to cheating and there was absolutely no shred of evidence showing non-weather manipulation.

SUMMARY: After the release of Tom Brady's appeal transcript on August 4, 2015 and Judge Berman's ruling on September 3, 2015, it became clearly that the NFL simply lied, twisted, misrepresented and leveraged its profound ignorance to try to smear the reputation of one of its all-time great players for a yet-undisclosed reason. There is no evidence of cheating by Brady or the Patriots. There is, however, numerous examples of disgusting behavior by Goodell and the league office.

It's hard to pass too much judgement due to the anonymity of the substance abuse policy. A few points though:

- I don't think the book was thrown at Josh while he was a Brown to the extent that you are implying. There was a lot of misinfo out there regarding Josh (no doubt planted by his camp) that was used to garner public sympathy. The whole second hand smoke, codeine for a cough, only a couple beers, misrepresenting different test thresholds for marijuana, and so on. There were times he could have rightfully been tossed for a year or longer and he was allowed to come back that season. One of these times actually happened while he got a DUI, shortly before meeting with Goodell, while already facing a year-long suspension.

- Gordon already missed the end of last season and all of the playoffs

- If the NFL is going easier on Gordon now, it probably has more to do with public relations and general attitudes about marijuana than anything. I really doubt the league office is actively pushing him back because he's on the Patriots.

Why dont you respond to the deflategate wiki, specifically the halftime ball meaurements.

HMMMMMM.

Abstract:

In the current “Deflategate” controversy, the New England Patriots have been accused of illicitly deflating footballs before the start of their 2015 American Football Conference championship game against the Indianapolis Colts. The National Football League and the lawyers it hired have produced a report — commonly known as the “Wells report” — that has been used to justify penalties against the Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady. Although the Wells report finds that the Patriots footballs declined in pressure significantly more than the Colts balls in the first half of the game, our replication of the report’s analysis finds that it relies on an unorthodox statistical procedure at odds with the methodology the report describes. It also fails to investigate all relevant scenarios. In addition, it focuses only on the difference between the Colts and Patriots pressure drops. Such a difference, however, can be caused either by the pressure in the Patriots balls dropping below their expected value or by the pressure in the Colts balls rising above their expected value. The second of these two scenarios seems more likely based on the absolute pressure measurements. Logistically, the greater change in pressure in the Patriots footballs can be explained by the fact that sufficient time may have passed between halftime testing of the two teams’ balls for the Colts balls to warm significantly, effectively inflating them.

Read the PDF.

I thought we all knew that Deflategate was bogus. Apparently not.

I think that's pretty normal actually. Deflating a ball makes it easier to grip. Over inflating a football makes it harder to grip. People don't see a competitive advantage in over inflating a football.

I'm not taking a side here, but Brady wasn't very cooperative during the investigation and I think that was his undoing.

So did Brady not smash his phone to conceal evidence?

So did Brady not smash his phone to conceal evidence?

Hmmm.....

Sorry but I’m hearing some sorry ass defenses right now of this.

Something tells me you...and ESPECIALLY Haus wouldn’t be defending Gordon if he smashed his phone during a situation like this.

Because the last time I checked, that would be obstruction of justice, regardless if he was part of the deflation or not.

I understand this was an nfl investigation and not a criminal one, but the concept still applies in the big picture.

Just odd why you guys are defending this, IMO.

I believe he did.

But, so did hillary..........yet not a word from you about that?

Players are under no obligation to turn over their cell phones to the NFL for an investigation. I would defend any player's right to decline.

Players are under no obligation to turn over their cell phones to the NFL for an investigation. I would defend any player's right to decline.

I still don't know what happened that day but all the research I did at the time led me to believe that the conclusion of the Ted Wells report should have been that it is unclear whether or not the Patriots equipment guy deflated footballs because the NFL protocols were so pathetic and lacking that no firm conclusion could possibly be made.

So why didn’t he simply not turn it over. Why destroy it?

Makes no sense.

Sorry but I’m hearing some sorry ass defenses right now of this.

Something tells me you...and ESPECIALLY Haus wouldn’t be defending Gordon if he smashed his phone during a situation like this.

Because the last time I checked, that would be obstruction of justice, regardless if he was part of the deflation or not.

I understand this was an nfl investigation and not a criminal one, but the concept still applies in the big picture.

Just odd why you guys are defending this, IMO.

Oh yea, that PRIVATE organizations can set whatever rules they want, and fire people for whatever reason they see fit.

So again, you’re going out of your way to defend Brady and the patriots, and yet out of your way to trash Gordon. Interesting stuff for sure.

NFL's damning silence on a new case of underinflated footballs

Just listen to those crickets. A conspicuous hush is emanating from the NFL office on the subject of those soft footballs the New York Giants retrieved from the field against the Pittsburgh Steelers last week. Where was the outrage, the treating of ball-inflation and pounds-per-square-inch as more serious than a hijacking? Compare the screams of scandal NFL executives emitted towards Tom Brady and the New England Patriots to this smothered, pillow-over-the-face reaction.

It's a guilty silence, and it leaves NFL commissioner Roger Goodell beached and exposed. Goodell has always struggled with the demands of speech, but his wordlessness in this instance has nothing to do with competence but rather dishonesty. Any serious examination of those footballs from the Giants-Steelers game might well show that Goodell owes the Patriots and Brady an apology and material recompense. Which is exactly why the league is shutting the matter down and shutting it down now.

When the Giants tested air pressure on two footballs they captured against the Steelers and reported them to be below the permissible range of 12.5 PSI, league officials should have leaped into action. They should have told Steelers officials, "You're in big f------ trouble" and then leaked erroneous amateur-hour data that poisoned the public understanding. They should have triggered a massive multimillion-dollar investigation, complete with footnoted junk science, that tarred a future Hall of Famer and resulted in fines, a forfeited draft pick and a four-game suspension. They should have invoked the words "scheme" and "tamper" and "cheating" and "competitive integrity," even compared the offense to "performance-enhancing drugs."

Instead? Nothing. NFL execs were neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed by the report of soft footballs. They weren't whelmed at all. Instead there was this throbbing stillness. Followed by an attempt at denial and misdirection. After Jay Glazer of Fox Sports broke the news that the Giants had gone to the league with measurements showing loss of air pressure, the NFL replied with a stiff-necked yet ducking statement: "The officiating game ball procedures were followed and there were no chain of command issues. All footballs were in compliance and no formal complaint was filed by the Giants with our office."

Ahhhhh. No "formal" complaint. As opposed to that by-the-book complaint lodged against the Patriots during the 2015 AFC Championship game, when Indianapolis Colts General Manager Ryan Grigson stuck his head into the NFL suite and bawled, "We're playing with a small ball." Which set off the most infamously ludicrous investigation in league history.

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The league would have you think there is nothing to see here, that they never received PSI data from the Giants that might be exculpatory for the Patriots. Move along, folks. But Giants Coach Ben McAdoo blew the cover story when he admitted Sunday night that the Giants had in fact tested two balls and found them soft. "I don't know, the PSIs were a little low, so they checked them, and they just let me know they checked them," he said. Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio came along with a sourced report that one ball had measured 11.4 and another 11.8. Glazer reaffirmed that the Giants indeed "alerted" the league about the balls.

Now, there are two things to take from this. The first is obvious. You don't need a legion of scientists and lawyers to know what anyone with a car knows: Cold weather causes air pressure to drop in footballs, the same as it does in your tires. The only people who don't know that are hermetically sealed in Park Avenue offices and only travel by soft shoe and NFL limo. If Steelers footballs were underinflated, the most likely explanation is not that someone deflated them by hand but that the game was played in temperatures in the low 40s, with a wind chill of 28. Just as natural deflation is the most likely explanation for what happened in the AFC title game, when the Patriots' balls measured an average of 11.3 in wet, even colder weather.

The second point is less obvious: Somebody from the New York Giants stuck a needle into two footballs during a game last week to measure them. Which tells you that the NFL's ball-security procedures are not being followed, even now.

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But the NFL doesn't want to get into that. If it admits it received info from the Giants about low PSI, then it has to admit that maybe weather affected the inflation of footballs in other games, too.

It has to admit that league officials lacked command of seventh-grade science and that Goodell raced to judgment. It has to admit that a few whiffs of PSI aren't a game-altering factor, much less worth serious penalties. It has to admit that Goodell is not willing to pursue Art Rooney and Ben Roethlisberger over the air in a couple of footballs with the same energy.

It has to admit that Deflategate was not a fair process but just a ginned-up excuse to punish the Patriots in order to satisfy owner envy and internal politics. It has to admit that it has been covering up PSI data in order to save the last rags of Goodell's shredded reputation. It has to admit that the NFL under this commissioner has zero credibility left.

So they ran afoul and still got what they wanted?

It even went through the court, and Brady still got suspended?

So why are you even bothering? Lol it makes no sense.

9. Roger Goodell failed to treat this as an equipment violation.

The NFL and the NFL Players Association have negotiated a fine schedule that applies when players engage in an equipment violation. The list of equipment violations includes the use of Stickum, a foreign substance that makes it easier to grip a football.

If guilty as charged, Brady was involved in a scheme aimed at making it easier to grip a football. So why wasn’t this treated as an equipment violation? Neither the league nor Goodell ever have supplied a plausible explanation to that straightforward and simple question.

Disagreeing with the decision of two colleagues who, like him, had been randomly assigned to hear the federal appeal of the Brady case, the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit hammered away at the point that Brady, if guilty, should have been slapped at worst with a fine in the amount of $8,268.

Yeah, really.

It matters for Brady, but not Hillary?