DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Brady's Suspension Upheld

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/repo...held/ar-AAdBouH

By Steve DelVecchio

The NFL is going to reject Tom Brady’s appeal and uphold the four-game suspension he is facing for his alleged role in Deflategate, according to one report.

Stephen A. Smith said on ESPN’s “First Take” Tuesday morning that a source told him Roger Goodell will not reduce or overturn Brady’s suspension. Perhaps more shocking, Smith cited a separate source who told him Brady actually destroyed his own personal cell phone rather than just refusing to turn it over.

We have known all along that the bigger issue here is Brady’s lack of cooperation during the Ted Wells investigation. The NFL was furious that Brady wouldn’t give up “relevant” text messages and emails that might help clarify his level of involvement — or lack thereof — in Patriots equipment managers allegedly letting air out of game balls.

Smith clarified that he was told by one source that the NFL is going stand by its four-game suspension within the next 24-48 hours, whereas the information about Brady destroying his cell phone was just “something I heard.” It was almost as if he was downplaying the information knowing how much of a bombshell the rumor was.

Reports in recent weeks have been all over the place regarding Brady’s appeal. There has been some indication that the two sides are working toward a settlement, though reports like this one make that seem unlikely.

If the NFL upholds the suspension, no one would be stunned. If someone can prove that Brady destroyed his cell phone, that would be tough for the New England Patriots quarterback to explain.

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/t...-roger-32738951

ABC Sports Link here

Ken Carmen--> #wreckthisphone

I wish he had it reduced to 0 games simply so they could beat Pittsburgh

Me too, but Bill will have Garafalo ready.

J/C

This makes me like Peyton Manning as the best QB between the two of them . Ugh, Brady's an idiot.

Who knows...maybe Tom gets replaced in NE similar to how he replaced Bledsoe?

I think they are making a big deal over very little. Teams are always looking for a competitive edge.

Do slower teams let the grass grow higher and saturate the field when they play faster teams? Do pitchers cut the ball? Do basketball players elbow, hold jerseys, stay in the paint too long, etc? Do boxers hold their opponents? Do offensive linemen hold?

I think the punishment has more to do w/all the complaining that the media and crying fans of other teams than the actual crime.

Deflating some footballs? Pffftttt.........big deal.

I think that 2 things are at work here, abiove all of the rest.

1, the Patriots are seemingly always involved in shady stuff.

2, Brady gave his phone to someone, and told him to destroy it.

Brady also refused to turn over records the NFL requested.

I hear you.

I also know that not many will agree w/me and I ain't trying to change anyone's mind. Personally, I just don't think it's that big of a deal.

Do you remember when {I think it was New England pre-Belichick} the home team cleared a spot on the field w/a snow plow to give the home team a better chance of making the game-winning FG? LMAO.......that was classic. Can you imagine if they tried something like today in the age of "let's make a story out of nothing?"

Sometimes I believe the NFL and some people believe the cover up can be worse than the crime. In this case I would have to agree.

I believe refusing to turn over the phone and having the phone destroyed was the worse of the two offenses.

Like texting?

I think Farmer being suspended for 4 games because he was texting is a freaking joke!

My issue w/the texting is that Farmer was interfering w/the coaching staff and no coach likes that. As far as rule-breaking goes..........it was not a big deal at all. No way he deserved 4 games.

You're right on everything you listed, but those items ARE against the rules. If you're caught, you're caught.

Plus, as you said about the fans and media, the "optics" of the situation forced the NFL to act. It was in the AFCCG, the golden boy was the culprit, and the Pats are known cheaters. And heck, I'm sure the other owners were more than happy to stand behind the suspension and Roger because they're all sick of seeing the Pats beat their brains in year after year.

And yes, as much as I'd not care to admit, Tom being white was probably a factor too. They had to drop the hammer on him if they drop the hammer on every other black player.

The funny thing is, the NFL was in a no-win situation. If they didn't suspend him everyone would go crazy, if they gave him 1 game everyone would go crazy, if they lowered the suspension to 2 or 1 then everyone would go crazy. And now that they're sticking to 4, the Brady camp is going crazy with lawsuits and injunctions (which is likely not going to happen).

I'm glad is closer to be over, even though we're not done yet.

But where does Brady's Private Phone/Phone records become an NFL team's business? He didn't break an actual law.

I have no question as to whether Brady had those balls deflated.


But why should an employee have to give over his private phone to his employer for his employer's investigation? Rules might have been broken, but Brady's phone records and his phone should be his own. He earned the money, he bought his cellphone. It's not a company phone.


I work on ships, and we have a voice recorder on the bridge. The company used to ask us to hand over the voice recordings to them. The thing recording our private conversations in the middle of the night. One guy got fired because the voice recorder data was pulled to get evidence on another of the company's ships which was involved in a collision (essentially they were in the same area, and the company pulled the recorder data from a boat not involved in the collision as evidence on the collision itself). He was talking bad about the company in a conversation with a co-worker, and they fired him based off the recorder data.


Sometimes, as fans, we think of the NFL as something other than a business. But to the players and owners, that's what it is.

This is such a waste of resources. IMO the NFL has the burden of proof. If you can't prove it, move on. And at the end of the day the NFL is going to loose this in court and Goodell is going to get the axe.

The NFL is in a no win situation because they didn't have the proof and still suspended TB. Goodell is rubber stamping his way out of a job.

The one thing the NFL might have going for it though, is that Goodell is the assigned arbitrator in all these matters as per the CBA.

It's really a matter of whether a court will see this case at all.

Interesting take about turning over his personal phone.

Makes me wonder if there were other things on there that Brady didn't want people to see. Maybe he has some ladies on the side or something.

That's part of what I was thinking also. You can say "What you give us is gonna be private" but those are just words. No guarantee.

What if Brady has a male lover or something (possibly Bellicheat!). That would disrupt his entire life.

Chances are he's just being a jerk. BUT, for his employer to ask him to turn over his cellphone to them is ridiculous.

I'd be furious if my company demanded I hand over my personal cellphone

I would say the NFL was guilty of deflating Brady's balls yesterday.

I just wish this story would go away. It's one of the dumbest stories of "cheating" around, but Sports Radio can't freaking stop talking about it non-stop. Every time any tidbit of new news comes out about this, they use it as an opportunity to re-hash the same arguments and other crap about this incident that we've heard for months.

Robert Kraft saying "I regret putting my faith in the league" says to me that he expected his good buddy Roger Goodell to give him a break..

And when he didnt get it, suddenly it's everyone else's fault..

Also, I'm tired of people laughing and thinking Belichek's shtick is funny.. the dude is just a grumpy jerk (in nice terms) that has only won when controversy was involved..

Yeah by all means forget that there was no real evidence to prove Brady's guilt when he was suspended. Then the NFL upholds a suspension after the they found out Brady trashed his own personnel phone with his own private & family info on it.



LOL Jealous that "text" couldn't win in the mist of controversy no doubt.

Well Goodell did drag it out for six months of this off season to sensationalize the "NFL" shield. And the controversy basked in the lime light for the NFL network to cover it over and over during the summer break.

This was all about NFL network and ratings and little to do about the integrity of the game.

Agreed!

Knowing he trashed his phone, I'm wondering if he and Hillary were consulting about Benghazi through texts and e-mails.

In unrelated news, the NFL has decreed that the first four games of the 2015 regular season will not count.

So tired of this story. I'm also tired of the bellyaching from Kraft and Brady, as well as the narrative that Tom and Bill are going to "take it out on their opponents" whenever he gets back into a game. Please. Boston fans are truly the worst. I can't wait until Brady retires and the Pats become another cog in the NFL machine and NOOOOOOOBODY in Boston will care about that team just like they didn't before Brady.

Aside from that, I don't think it's that big of a deal anyway. Yeah they cheated, but I don't see it as that much of an advantage since most of these others teams probably do the same thing...

I mean it's not like they were recording other teams' practices or anything...

I wished they would have suspended "Text" from this years draft and the draft for each of the next 3 years.
That would be pretty fair in my book.
Hire that bum off the street (who wanted JFF) to replace him. We still could do NO worse...

You are acting as dumb as the side that supports Farmer's every move.

It's not just sports radio.. it was the lead story on CNN yesterday when I was having lunch. It was right in front of a congressman who was charged with racketeering and what's going on in Kyrgyzstan claiming the US is trying to create civil unrest in that country... but Tom Brady's balls still got the lead.

I really like Tom's Facebook comment from yesterday. He said, "Most importantly, I have never written, texted, emailed to anybody at anytime, anything related to football air pressure before this issue was raised at the AFC Championship game in January."

That's very Barry Bonds or Lance Armstrong of him. He left out "verbal discussion".

Even Pete Rose thinks Tom Brady should just admit it.

LOL Pete wasn't suspended or banned from MLB until they proved he bet on baseball decades ago. Lance Armstrong wasn't suspended or banned from cycling until a US Anti Doping committee proved he was doping. See the difference?

If the investigator is to be believed, they offered to let Brady just turn over transcripts of the texts, no need to turn the phone in to expose possibly personal information...

The humor of it all is Roger talks about protecting the shield, yet his decisions in the last year have done far more damage to the shield than any of the players. Roger lied about seeing the Ray Rice tapes and has lied about the destruction of the phone. And when has the court of public opinion ever supposed to be able to convict.
Would hate to be an Indy fan when they meet up. Somehow don't see Tom willing to take his foot off the accelerator in that one.LOL

Don't call the Kettle black Mr. Pot...

Mortensen to address initial #DeflateGate report on WEEI


Posted by Mike Florio on July 30, 2015, 7:36 PM EDT
link


The #DeflateGate debacle instantly transformed from a strange curiosity into a full-blown controversy the moment Chris Mortensen of ESPN reported that 11 of 12 Patriots footballs were 2.0 pounds under the 12.5 PSI minimum. Mortensen has never address or explained the story publicly.

On Friday morning, he will. During a 7:45 a.m. ET appearance on WEEI radio in Boston.

The theory, as echoed by Patriots owner Robert Kraft on Wednesday, is that the NFL deliberately leaked false information to Mortensen. At a minimum, the NFL failed to dispute or to correct the erroneous report, with the Patriots not knowing the true reading until late March and the rest of us not knowing the truth until the release of the Ted Wells report in May.

The impact of the false report cannot be understated. The information caused many to assume that tampering with the footballs had occurred. The only remaining unknowns were the identity of the deflator (maybe it was “the Deflator”) and those who knew about it.

The information also put the Patriots on their heels at a critical stage of the investigation. Tom Brady’s awkward press conference only two days later was likely extra awkward because he believed, as did everyone else, that someone put a needle in those balls and released two pounds of air pressure. Brady likely continued to be under that false impression until late March, infecting everything he did (including his interview with Ted Wells) with a vague sense that someone was guilty of something.

If the real PSI numbers had been leaked (or released after the false leak), the Patriots could have shouted down any suggestion of tampering by explaining that the numbers fall within the range expected by the Ideal Gas Law — and by pointing out that the league’s shoddy procedures for calibrating footballs prior to kickoff of a conference title game included using a pair of gauges that differed by nearly a half of a pound. The strange curiosity would have quickly become a forgotten footnote to a blowout win.

Making the league’s failure to respond to Mortensen’s report becomes even more glaring in light of the fact that the NFL has not hesitated to correct other information with which it disagrees, including for example the claim from ESPN’s Adam Schefter that Brady had only four hours to present his case on appeal.

Speaking of Schefter, he appeared earlier today on WEEI’s Dennis & Callahan show, and he addressed the criticism of Mortensen’s 11-of-12 footballs report.

“First of all, I’ve never had in-depth conversations with Chris about the story,” Schefter said. “Chris is as good a reporter as there is. And he’s been a pioneer in this industry. So when he decides to do things, he has a reason for doing them. And I’ll just stand behind him as a reporter and as a man. I love him.

“And I don’t know the particulars of what happened. I really don’t, OK?. But I can tell you this, somebody wanted information out. You’re blaming him. But I will say this. Number one, I’m sure he has an explanation. Number two, any reporter in the country, if they have high level people calling them, giving them this information, almost anyone’s gonna run with it.”

In other words, someone lied to Mortensen.

“If that is indeed the case that one, two, three high-level individuals intentionally misled him to try to smear the Patriots, I saw more shame on those people than Mort,” Schefter said.

I agree with that, completely. And Mort should be upset, because he’s been taking the heat (which has increased considerably in recent days) for reporting information that was given to him by someone in the league office whom Mort trusted.

ESPN surely would have preferred that the glaring error continue to go largely unnoticed. When PFT asked for comment on the discrepancy between Mortensen’s report and the actual PSI numbers in the Wells report, an ESPN spokesman initially said this: “[The] Wells report has been out for a week. Why are you seeking comment about his reporting now?”

More than two later, a comment from Mort apparently is coming. He’ll likely say basically the same things Schefter said. If pressed, Mort may indeed be tempted to disclose whoever it was that gave him deliberately false information.

Sure, reporters need to protect their sources. But should reporters protect sources who deliberately put reporters in professional danger?