DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Deflategate- Wells report finds Pats employees probably deflated balls vs. Colts

http://espn.go.com/boston/nfl/story/_/id...-deflated-balls

The NFL has found that it is probable that New England Patriots personnel deliberately deflated balls during the AFC Championship Game in January and that quarterback Tom Brady was "generally aware" of what was happening.

The findings were released by Ted Wells, the league-appointed attorney who investigated whether the Patriots deflated balls in their game against the Indianapolis Colts.

"For the reasons described in this Report, and after a comprehensive investigation, we have concluded that, in connection with the AFC Championship Game, it is more probable than not that New England Patriots personnel participated in violations of the Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate effort to circumvent the rules," the report said. "In particular, we have concluded that it is more probable than not that Jim McNally (the Officials Locker Room attendant for the Patriots) and John Jastremski (an equipment assistant for the Patriots) participated in a deliberate effort to release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referee. Based on the evidence, it also is our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady (the quarterback for the Patriots) was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of McNally and Jastremski involving the release of air from Patriots game balls.
Patriots Deflation Controversy

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"Based on the evidence, the investigation has further concluded that that there was no deliberate attempt by the Patriots to introduce to the playing field a non-approved kicking ball during the AFC Championship Game. Although Patriots personnel provided a kicking ball to game officials that did not have the distinctive inspection mark of the referee, we find that the Patriots personnel involved believed the ball to be authentic and appropriate. We do not believe that there was any attempt by Patriots personnel, including Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski, to deliberately circumvent the rules by offering the kicking ball for play."

The NFL is considering discipline for Brady, McNally and Jastremski, a source close to the investigation told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter. Discipline is "days" away, the source said.

The 243-page Wells report said league investigators found no evidence that coach Bill Belichick and team management knew of the practice.

The Patriots, who won the game and went on to beat the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl, said in a statement "to say we are disappointed in its findings, which do not include any incontrovertible or hard evidence of deliberate deflation of footballs at the AFC Championship Game, would be a gross understatement."

"While I respect the independent process of the investigation, the time, effort and resources expended to reach this conclusion are incomprehensible to me," Patriots CEO Robert Kraft said. "Knowing that there is no real recourse available, fighting the league and extending this debate would prove to be futile. We understand and greatly respect the responsibility of being one of 32 in this league and, on that basis, we will accept the findings of the report and take the appropriate actions based on those findings as well as any discipline levied by the league."

The findings of the report now will be turned over to Troy Vincent, NFL executive vice president of football operations.

"As with other recent matters involving violations of competitive rules, Troy Vincent and his team will consider what steps to take in light of the report, both with respect to possible disciplinary action and to any changes in protocols that are necessary to avoid future incidents of this type," commissioner Roger Goodell said. "At the same time, we will continue our efforts vigorously to protect the integrity of the game and promote fair play at all times."

The NFL began investigating after the Patriots defeated the Colts 45-7 on Jan. 18. The Colts complained that several footballs were under inflated and the NFL confirmed that 11 of the 12 footballs were under the limit.

Footballs with less pressure can be easier to grip and catch. Some quarterbacks prefer footballs that have less air.

The NFL requires balls to be inflated between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds per square inch, and each team is responsible for the balls it uses on offense. Brady said he prefers footballs inflated to 12.5 pounds per square inch. On many occasions, Brady said he never asked for balls to be deflated outside of the rules.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

This really isn't that surprising.

I think a lot of teams try and find competitive advantages. Can you seriously blame Brady for wanting a ball that's easier to throw?

He'll get a big fine or something and that'll be it.

I thought I remember reading that when the referees caught on to the issue the balls were replaced with real ones at halftime? Then the Patriots proceeded to continue dominating the Colts in every phase of the game.

"Probably" and "generally aware."

So basically they found nothing substantial. Farce.

actually...


the report is on espn and you can read it in pdf file...


there are text message exchanges between two pats empoloyees that incriminate themselves and brady.

the guy who does the deflating is rewarded with shoes, clothing, and brady autographs.

a request to further interview and question the man who deflated the footballs was denied by the pats lawyers and they refused to even notify the guy the wells team wanted to interview him again.

NE will be severly punished. Tom Brady will be suspended for the 1st play of the pre-season, Belichick will be forced to where a sweater with sleeves, and Robert Craft will not be allowed to order wings in his Owners Box until after the National Anthem.

It will be interesting to see what the punishment will be.

Brady probably deserves to be suspended for 4 games for this. It is apparent that he not only got people to cheat for him, but encouraged and rewarded them for cheating. The text messages are really fairly damning.

Brady came out and all but swore on his utility man's life that he knew nothing about any of it. He then repeated that a few more times. I can't see the NFL letting even Tom Brady get away with such blatant cheating, and then blatantly lying about it. While the whole thing seems pretty stupid, it has turned into an "integrity of the game" problem the way I see it.

Yes, if it was outside of what the rules allow.


That's irrelevant.

I haven't seen the part about the lawyers circling the wagons, but yes, the text messages are damning. I need to dig into the details on this one before I form any strong opinions. You have the text messages, but your conclusion is it's "highly probable" they cheated? They say they found the guy that was deliberately deflating the balls, and your official statement is all wishy-washy? Again, I'll reserve judgement until later, but this stinks a couple different ways.

Take all their championships away! And I'm serious!!!!!!!!!!

We need to suspend these people along with Brady himself immediately. I mean let's go, what on earth is taking so long?

They weren't given "full" cooperation as promised, but based on the cooperation they did receive they feel they most likely did it on purpose...

or any lawyer speak for yeah they did it, we just couldn't prove it beyond a complete reasonable doubt....

My punishment prediction:

The NFL gives Kraft $12.5m (the min the balls should be pressurized)
The NFL fines Bill $25 (not $25,000...$25)
The NFL suspends Tom for 1 week of OTAs
The NFL will hang the two equipment guys and bankrupt their families

Okay, that's a joke. I actually hope Tom isn't suspended. He plays the Steelers in Week 1. We want him under center!

It is really funny that this story comes out now 1 week after the NFL draft.

yeah really. but atleast this means any draft picks they lose, will be higher than this year (unless they win the SB next year). plus next years draft should be a better one imo

How many "Gates" have the Patriots been involved in? I have lost count.
SpyGate, DeflateGate...etc...and probably had something to do with WaterGate...
The thing that boggles the mind is Belichick didn't even neet to cheat, but I will always think of him as a cheater.

spygate produced a superbowl. deflategate produced a superbowl. Its not cheating unless you get caught, thing is, they keep getting caught after they have already enjoyed the benefit of the cheating. hell if they arent using illegal subs they dont make it to the superbowl. Sick of their crap and nothing comes from it. Screw the Pats.

It seems like a very deliberate and long standing cheating action over a possible long period of time. Brady should be suspended a year and they should lose a 1st rounder. Maybe eventually their culture of cheating will begin to change then.

Bell: NFL must hammer Tom Brady, Patriots in Deflategate aftermath

Go ahead, NFL. Suspend Tom Brady.

In the wake of findings revealed in the latest Wells Report, this one stemming from the Deflategate investigation, now is not the time to suddenly go soft and underinflated with discipline — even when it would mean sitting one the league's icons.

If Cleveland Browns general manager Ray Farmer was banned for four games for text messaging his coaching staff during a game, if Atlanta Falcons President Rich McKay was temporarily kicked off the competition committee he chairs for noise pollution at the Georgia Dome, if coach Sean Payton and GM Mickey Loomis were suspended a few years ago amid the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal, then Brady needs to take a seat, too, in the name of integrity.

It doesn't matter that Brady really doesn't need his footballs inflated to less than the required 12.5 pounds per square inch to be one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

But a violation is just that. And this one, while it doesn't rise to the level of offering a bounty to inspire injuring an opponent, strikes me as worse than text messaging Kyle Shanahan or piping in extra noise when the Falcons defense is gearing up for third-and-long.

The NFL — with executive VP Troy Vincent swinging the hammer and Commissioner Roger Goodell needing to back him to the hilt — had better take Brady off the field temporarily for this or never utter another word about integrity, fair play or competitive balance.

Speak your message, NFL, then support it with strong action. That means sitting Brady down for at least a game or two, which would send a strong message about cheating.

And Brady shouldn't be the only one to take a hit.

Even though Patriots coach Bill Belichick, team owner Robert Kraft and the organization at large were not found to be engaged in underinflating footballs — according to the findings of investigators led by Ted Wells — it happened on their watch. That's why Payton got hammered with his one-year suspension. Ignorance, Goodell said in the Saints ruling, is not an excuse.

And in the Patriots' case, the benefit of the doubt — expired a long time ago in NFL circles by opponents — doesn't apply because they were warned by Goodell after the Spygate controversy in 2007 that if they were ever found violating rules in the future, it would be held against them.

Well, the future is now. I can't see how the punishment won't include, in addition to a sanction against Brady, a hefty fine for New England and maybe even a price to be applied in next year's draft.

You can bet more than a few people around the NFL, many of whom have suspected the Patriots of crossing the line in instances over the years, will be watching intently to see how hard the league will hit one of its signature franchises and most popular players.

I know it might be hard to fathom on one level, especially with Brady.

Where's the hard evidence? Shoot, Tom Brady Sr., the GQ quarterback's dad, even suggested to USA TODAY Sports that his son was being framed.

No, Brady is being identified as an obvious suspect because it's naive to think a professional quarterback doesn't have an inkling about the footballs he throws. And this is the same Brady who joined forces with Peyton Manning in 2006 to lobby the league for a rule change that allowed road teams the opportunity to prepare their footballs just like the home team. You know, competitive balance.

Brady's unconvincing assertions during a January news conference — so weak that they inspired a Saturday Night Live skit —obviously weren't on par with Michael Vick lying about his involvement in a dogfighting ring. But when Brady refuses to turn over celphone records to investigators, it does nothing to clear his name.

The circumstantial evidence is damning. Jim McNally, New England's longtime locker room attendant, and John Jastremski, the equipment staff assistant, implicated Brady — as well as themselves.

Without question, McNally and Jastremski need to be relieved of their game-day roles.

McNally, who called himself the "deflator," was the guy who took the footballs from the officials' locker room to the field without permission from those officials before the AFC Championship Game against the Indianapolis Colts and stopped off at a bathroom for 1 minute, 40 seconds, with the footballs in tow.

Jastremski is the one who talked with Brady multiple times after the Colts' suspicions and NFL involvement became public knowledge and, for the first time in his 20 years with the Patriots, visited with Brady in the "quarterback room" at Gillette Stadium the morning after the title game.

Wells doesn't buy these instances as coincidence, and neither should the rest of us.

That's too bad for Brady, who has been such a class act and big-time winner throughout his career. He still will go down as one of the greats, just like Belichick is among the best coaches in NFL history.

But now it's pretty apparent that Brady's legacy is not complete without mention of Deflategate.

That doesn't tarnish Brady's standing as a clutch winner. Yet this adds fodder for debate.

Now it's up to the NFL to come down on one of its marquee players, as hard as that will be for a league that has been rocked over the past year by so many more heinous episodes courtesy of situations that were far more serious.

But imagine the stain that a Brady suspension would put on the NFL's kickoff game in September, when the Pittsburgh Steelers — minus suspended all-pro running back Le'Veon Bell — open the season at Gillette Stadium against the defending Super Bowl champions. Brady's potential absence would be so much worse — and more symbolic — than him skipping the team's recent visit to the White House. It might even prompt the Patriots to buck tradition and pick another time besides the season opener to raise their newest championship banner.

If, that is, the NFL brings down the hammer as it should.

***

Follow NFL columnist Jarrett Bell on Twitter @JarrettBell

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/bell...math/ar-BBjj59c

Someone on here predicted this LOL Some flunkies will take the hit, Belichick will skate and Brady will get a slap on the wrist.

I don't think anyone can convince me that Belichick wasn't behind all this.

Agreed. Doubtful anything goes on with the Pats that Belichick isn't aware of, if not pulling the strings.

Some equipment manager or two gets fired, Brady gets a stern talking to, and it all goes away as if it never happened.

I think a lot of us did...

they could have had these results right after the game if they chose.

They sat on it until after the superbowl to let the upset fans lose most of their frustration with Deflategate.

eventually- fans will say this enough and will start ingesting their time into other sports like rugby or LAX.

I don't know about you guys but this makes me feel a whole lot better over the whole texting the sidelines disaster.

I don't care what they do to Brady. I'd say six or eight games worth of suspension would be adequate. Oh, and I'm working on a design for a rapid inflator/deflator that can adjust ball air pressure on the fly, pardon the pun. The ball boys need to work smarter and harder on this thing.

NFL initially gave Patriots bad information about PSI readings

Posted by Mike Florio on May 7, 2015, 7:31 AM EDT
link

To no surprise, the 274-page report generated by Ted Wells contains plenty of information. And that information includes some bad information that initially was given to the Patriots.

At page 100 of the report, Wells explains that the January 19 letter from NFL senior V.P. David Gardi to Patriots owner Robert Kraft provided two inaccurate facts to the Patriots.

“The inspection, which involved each ball being inspected twice with different gauges, revealed that none of the Patriots’ game balls were inflated to the specifications required under Rule 2, Section 1,” Gardi wrote. “In fact, one of the game balls was inflated to 10.1 psi, far below the requirement of 12-1/2 to 13-1/2 psi. In contrast, each of the Colts’ game balls that was inspected met the requirements set forth above.”

The Wells report notes that not a single measurement of any of the New England footballs reflected a PSI reading of 10.1. In fact, only one measurement of one football was as low as 10.5 PSI.

The Wells report also points out that Gardi’s comments about the Colts’ game balls was not accurate. On one of the two gauges used to test the footballs, THREE of the four Colts balls tested were UNDER the limit of 12.5 PSI.

The Wells report essentially shrugs at these arguably significant misstatements of fact, pointing out that Gardi wasn’t personally at the game (then why did he write the letter?) and that the mistakes were “inadvertent.”

But the errors speak to a potential degree of zeal and desire by some in the league office to catch the Patriots in the act. While the Wells report separately concludes that there was no evidence of bias against the Patriots, two clear and obvious misstatements in the first communication on the situation regarding facts that go to the heart of the case — the air pressure in Patriots footballs and the air pressure in Colts footballs — should at least spark healthy curiosity that someone was out to get the Patriots.

Coupled with the fact that multiple league officials knew about the suspicions and that none of them warned the Patriots or relayed the information to someone who possibly would (such as, you know, Commissioner Roger Goodell), it’s hard not to wonder whether one or more people were more concerned about catching the Patriots than dotting all i’s, crossing all t’s, and ultimately acting in the broader best interests of the NFL.

None of this exonerates the Patriots, if as Wells concluded a violation occurred. But if that conclusion arose from a process that involved one or more people who weren’t as concerned about getting it right as they were about getting the Patriots, that’s a problem.

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I thought the Texting was wrong, not because I find anything wrong with it, but because it goes against the rules that are in place.

Texting isn't going to change the game outcome.

Deflating the balls to give yourself an edge is against the rules of the game but even more importantly, it's cheating and can change the outcome of a game.

Deflating balls and texting are both rule violations, but no question in my mind, Deflating balls is the worse of the two.

Nah 4 games isn't enough, Brady should be suspended for the entire year without pay and fined considerably.Also his record should be marked that another cheating incident with him will result in him being tossed from the league permanently.

the NFL needs to take a hard stance that cheating in any form simply won't be tolerated. it can't be tolerated.

Tom Brady is nothing more then a cheater, both him and Bellichik should NEVER get into the Hall of Fame simply on the grounds they both cheated with Spygate, and now this...its clear they both have been cheating the whole time, can't take their titles away from them, but we sure as heck can make sure they NEVER enter into the Hall of Fame which is how it should be...cheaters should be barred from the HOF no matter how one wants to shake it...if you let cheaters into the HOF then you might as well let drug addicts, juicers, and every other schmuck too.

breaking a rule to get an advantage actually is cheating. It is probably almost the exact definition.

^^ what Arps just said ^^

LOL, arps!

And here I thought I couldn't hate the Patriots even more than I already did.

Brady and Belichick were confirmed cheaters before DeflateGate.
And there's simply NO WAY those guys would have deflated the footballs without Brady and Belichick signing off on it. BOTH of them. Anyone who believes otherwise is smoking something good.

A long suspension is appropriate here.

The reason I say 4 games is that it was intended to be a performance enhancing act, and the 1st performance enhancing drug violation is 4 games, so that seems fair.

I do think that the Patriots are also going to face punishment for their part in covering this up. I suspect that they could lose a draft pick, and that whoever helped the initial cover-up could also face punishment.

What Clem said that Arps just said

If it were the Browns, it would probably be an indefinite/year long suspension for Brady. Since it's the Superbowl winning Patriots, they'll probably get a fine and lose a 6th rounder (as close an approximation of taking away Brady as the league is willing to go). If Tommy Tantrum hadn't lied about knowing "the Deflator", I probably wouldn't even care about this. I don't think it really effected the outcome of games, or he's the only QB to like his balls outside the league's specs. Like Textgate, rules are rules, though. Since New England was already put on notice after Spygate, I think there should be a more severe punishment say a 2 game suspension for Brady and a 4th rounder, but it probably won't happen.

I frequently agree with your posts, eo, but I don't buy into that statement. IMO, it is indeed out-n-out cheating...

i dont care too much about accolades for individual players, thats up the the NFL HOF guys.

regarding the actual league, here and now, i dont see how they arent punished. to say its just making the ball more comfortable is silly to me. i think its similar to corking a bat in baseball.. it is specifically manipulating equipment outside of speculation, in order to gain a competitive advantage.

What I find as interesting is Brady refused to turn over Cell phone texting records. This is the NFL.. not the Law enforcement, there is no subpoena power. One of the NFL rules is you must comply with an investigation. Brady can only refuse if there is a possible legal violation and is therefore executing his 5th Amendment Rights. Sorry.. having footballs deflated is not criminal ( though I realize there are some on the board who will disagree.. ). So if nothing else, Brady will be punished for failure to assist a league investigation and miss games and/or be fined accordingly.