Are the Patriots "Tainted"?

[Jason3123]

I'm far from a Pats fan, but if you think that they are the only team that is "tainted", you are dreaming. Every team takes advantage of any and all advantages they can get, whether within the rules of the game or not. It's just a matter of who is around when it happens...and who is left holding the bill when the bleep hits the fan.

Probably true but they are the only team to be caught...twice..so, maybe other teams aren't doing stuff like filming or altering balls?

The fact that they've been caught doing stuff twice is crazy. What else have they not been caught doing?

[theone]

Does anyone else find the amount of time and money spent on this investigation to be kind of insane given a violation that is the functional equivalent of a baseball pitcher doctoring baseballs? Can you imagine MLB doing an investigation of that magnitude for that offence?

[TommyL31]

I'm far from a Pats fan, but if you think that they are the only team that is "tainted", you are dreaming. Every team takes advantage of any and all advantages they can get, whether within the rules of the game or not. It's just a matter of who is around when it happens...and who is left holding the bill when the bleep hits the fan.

Probably true but they are the only team to be caught...twice..so, maybe other teams aren't doing stuff like filming or altering balls?

The fact that they've been caught doing stuff twice is crazy. What else have they not been caught doing?

And by caught you mean reported by rivals who were bitter because they thought they were upstaged/disrespected by Pats.

Some teams coaches, players, and owners aren't big fans of being shown up and the smugness with which the Pats do it so things conveniently get leaked about the Patriots. The Pats might get beat by good football teams from time to time but they're not going to be beat by a bunch of bitter crybabies.

[Dookmarriot]

Does anyone else find the amount of time and money spent on this investigation to be kind of insane given a violation that is the functional equivalent of a baseball pitcher doctoring baseballs? Can you imagine MLB doing an investigation of that magnitude for that offence?

Goodell looked clueless and soft with his suspensions last year. And I'm sure he heard the talk that the Pats don't get hit the way other teams do because Goodell and Kraft are buddies.

So the suspension is largely a PR move. The Pats and Brady deserve sanction, but it's simply their bad luck to be the guys in the dock when the league has decided they need to be tougher in their punishments. The Pats, and the next players teams to violate a league rule (whomever they shall be) are going to take a bigger hit while the NFL "counterbalances" the weak suspensions they doled out last year.

Same thing happened in the financial field when the SEC went from lap dogs to attack dogs. Woe to the firms that were the first ones to face the newer, angrier regulator. It wasn't fair or consistent, but it's what happens when you have a self-regulated industry. Like the SEC, the NFL is the judge and jury.

[Jason3123]

I'm far from a Pats fan, but if you think that they are the only team that is "tainted", you are dreaming. Every team takes advantage of any and all advantages they can get, whether within the rules of the game or not. It's just a matter of who is around when it happens...and who is left holding the bill when the bleep hits the fan.

Probably true but they are the only team to be caught...twice..so, maybe other teams aren't doing stuff like filming or altering balls?

The fact that they've been caught doing stuff twice is crazy. What else have they not been caught doing?

And by caught you mean reported by rivals who were bitter because they thought they were upstaged/disrespected by Pats.

Some teams coaches, players, and owners aren't big fans of being shown up and the smugness with which the Pats do it so things conveniently get leaked about the Patriots. The Pats might get beat by good football teams from time to time but they're not going to be beat by a bunch of bitter crybabies.

But again...they still broke the rules, who cares if they reported? Just because they were reported by "bitter rivals" makes it okay? Teams reporting them doesn't make them cry babies.

If I catch you stealing at a store, and report you, that makes me a crybaby? Rules are in place for a reason. Maybe they're dumb rules, but that's a different debate. The fact is they've been caught/reported twice. That means they've broken rules twice. Plain and simple.

[theone]

Does anyone else find the amount of time and money spent on this investigation to be kind of insane given a violation that is the functional equivalent of a baseball pitcher doctoring baseballs? Can you imagine MLB doing an investigation of that magnitude for that offence?

Goodell looked clueless and soft with his suspensions last year. And I'm sure he heard the talk that the Pats don't get hit the way other teams do because Goodell and Kraft are buddies.

So the suspension is largely a PR move. The Pats and Brady deserve sanction, but it's simply their bad luck to be the guys in the dock when the league has decided they need to be tougher in their punishments. The Pats, and the next players teams to violate a league rule (whomever they shall be) are going to take a bigger hit while the NFL "counterbalances" the weak suspensions they doled out last year.

Same thing happened in the financial field when the SEC went from lap dogs to attack dogs. Woe to the firms that were the first ones to face the newer, angrier regulator. It wasn't fair or consistent, but it's what happens when you have a self-regulated industry. Like the SEC, the NFL is the judge and jury.

I wrote about the same idea in the "Brady" post. But this still does not answer the question of why the league wasted so much time and money on the investigation. They simply could have handed out a large penalty if they wanted using a normal internal investigation. Instead they end up of with a 200+ page monstrosity of a report after months of investigation that has problem after problem and provides very few definitive answers.

[Dookmarriot]

They probably put out the report as a PR exercise too. I'll cynically suggest they wrote it knowing that most fans wouldn't read it. But hey! They have a report to "back up" the punishment!

[TommyL31]

And by caught you mean reported by rivals who were bitter because they thought they were upstaged/disrespected by Pats.

Some teams coaches, players, and owners aren't big fans of being shown up and the smugness with which the Pats do it so things conveniently get leaked about the Patriots. The Pats might get beat by good football teams from time to time but they're not going to be beat by a bunch of bitter crybabies.

But again...they still broke the rules, who cares if they reported? Just because they were reported by "bitter rivals" makes it okay? Teams reporting them doesn't make them cry babies.

If I catch you stealing at a store, and report you, that makes me a crybaby? Rules are in place for a reason. Maybe they're dumb rules, but that's a different debate. The fact is they've been caught/reported twice. That means they've broken rules twice. Plain and simple.

Not saying people are crybabies for reporting, saying that if it is a common practice and many people are trying to skirt the rules in the exact same way and the only team you feel 'morally obligated' to report are the ones who hurt your feelings then yes, you're a bitter crybaby. A better analogy to yours would be if everyone goes 5-10 miles over the speed limit and you don't pay attention until a guy you don't like drives by and you call the cops on him.

But to clarify, I'm also not saying that the Patriots were cheating in this case nor do I think the Wells report offers anything but the weakest circumstantial proof. All it shows is that the Patriots prefer their balls at the lower limit of legal (which they've acknowledged) and that the balls were under at half time because they lost air (as did the Colts balls). Also that Tom busts John Jastremski's balls about the feel of the balls and John busts Jim's to make sure their right. So, to my eye, the Pats are being punished for PR purposes and because the Pats hurt a few people's feelings (including Roger Goodell when Kraft said he expected an apology).

[kmbryant09]

Not saying people are crybabies for reporting, saying that if it is a common practice and many people are trying to skirt the rules in the exact same way and the only team you feel 'morally obligated' to report are the ones who hurt your feelings then yes, you're a bitter crybaby. A better analogy to yours would be if everyone goes 5-10 miles over the speed limit and you don't pay attention until a guy you don't like drives by and you call the cops on him.

But to clarify, I'm also not saying that the Patriots were cheating in this case nor do I think the Wells report offers anything but the weakest circumstantial proof. All it shows is that the Patriots prefer their balls at the lower limit of legal (which they've acknowledged) and that the balls were under at half time because they lost air (as did the Colts balls). Also that Tom busts John Jastremski's balls about the feel of the balls and John busts Jim's to make sure their right. So, to my eye, the Pats are being punished for PR purposes and because the Pats hurt a few people's feelings (including Roger Goodell when Kraft said he expected an apology).

Didn't the Colts' balls deflate only by a few 1/10's of a PSI, while the Patriots ball deflated by more than 1 PSI?

And again, it's not like the Patriots got the okay to use balls below the lower threshold - they specifically circumvented the rules by producing footballs at a certain level, getting them cleared, and then releasing air BELOW the allowed level. How can you even compare the Colts balls to the Patriots' balls?

[Unknown]

But to clarify, I'm also not saying that the Patriots were cheating in this case nor do I think the Wells report offers anything but the weakest circumstantial proof. All it shows is that the Patriots prefer their balls at the lower limit of legal (which they've acknowledged) and that the balls were under at half time because they lost air (as did the Colts balls). Also that Tom busts John Jastremski's balls about the feel of the balls and John busts Jim's to make sure their right. So, to my eye, the Pats are being punished for PR purposes and because the Pats hurt a few people's feelings (including Roger Goodell when Kraft said he expected an apology).

Am I reading that right? You think the Patriots were NOT cheating? Why on earth would anybody take a bag of footballs into a bathroom if they were following the rules?

Maybe you can make the argument that the two employees were acting completely on their own (though I think that's bull), and that Brady and whoever else weren't involved, but to say there wasn't any cheating going on requires ignoring one of the few pieces of hard evidence there is in this case.

[DLF3000]

In the real world, every pro team cheats. We're talking adults and generations of rich ownership in a multi-billion dollar industry, right?

Some of that cheating is the equivalent of rolling through a stop sign (like the ball deflation thing, which every team messes with), some of it isn't.

NFL: "Let's make an example of these guys so everyone else stops rolling through stop signs - errr messing with their balls! Because only now is it a big deal, yeah!"

Yawn. Overreact more. Wake me up when we start playing games again.

http://yourteamcheats.com/ - hilarious website!

[TommyL31]

Not saying people are crybabies for reporting, saying that if it is a common practice and many people are trying to skirt the rules in the exact same way and the only team you feel 'morally obligated' to report are the ones who hurt your feelings then yes, you're a bitter crybaby. A better analogy to yours would be if everyone goes 5-10 miles over the speed limit and you don't pay attention until a guy you don't like drives by and you call the cops on him.

But to clarify, I'm also not saying that the Patriots were cheating in this case nor do I think the Wells report offers anything but the weakest circumstantial proof. All it shows is that the Patriots prefer their balls at the lower limit of legal (which they've acknowledged) and that the balls were under at half time because they lost air (as did the Colts balls). Also that Tom busts John Jastremski's balls about the feel of the balls and John busts Jim's to make sure their right. So, to my eye, the Pats are being punished for PR purposes and because the Pats hurt a few people's feelings (including Roger Goodell when Kraft said he expected an apology).

Didn't the Colts' balls deflate only by a few 1/10's of a PSI, while the Patriots ball deflated by more than 1 PSI?

And again, it's not like the Patriots got the okay to use balls below the lower threshold - they specifically circumvented the rules by producing footballs at a certain level, getting them cleared, and then releasing air BELOW the allowed level. How can you even compare the Colts balls to the Patriots' balls?

There is no proof whatsoever that the Patriots let air out of the balls. Only that at halftime the balls were below the threshold even though they were at the lowest level pre-game and all balls for both teams lost air during the first half. Add in the fact that no measurements were recorded pre game.

If you actually want a good bit of high comedy I highly encourage you to actually READ the report as opposed to the talking points. Here's a tidbit from page 116:
"Our scientific consultants ultimately informed us that the data alone did not provide a basis for them to determine with absolute certainty whether there was or was not tampering." This is followed by a bunch of reasons why the Patriots MUST have tampered with them. So the Wells team paid a group of scientists to give their professional opinion and they couldn't find proof but Wells and his buddies got out their junior physicists set and conducted their own made up, non-scientific tests to prove that they must have been tampered with.

The Wells report even admits in writing that according to the Ideal Gas Law the balls should have lost 1-1.2 PSI by halftime (page 117).

I will literally link to the Wells report as it seems like many here are basing their opinions on media talking points and not on the report itself. Wells Report

I'll also link to an NBC article that details problem of the different air gauges used which clearly read consistently different numbers and Walt Anderson is not sure (nor did he record) which one was used pre-game http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... ls-report/

The report is literally page after page of:
"Walt Anderson isn't sure if he used the gauge with the higher or lower readings on it pre-game and there are no records. We're going to assume he used the one with the lower readings."
"John Jastremski gave an explanation of a text that suggests it was not related to the inflation level of balls at all. We're going to assume he's lying."
"Tom Brady talked to us for an entire day but he had a lot of lawyers with him so it's not relevant what he said. He was probably lying anyway."
"Our scientists said there's no proof in the data of tampering. What do they know. We ran different experiments without them and determined they probably were tampered with."

[Dookmarriot]

My favourite part of the report? How many times the Patriots staff say "F*** Tom" in their texts!

I wonder if Cowboys staff ever spoke that way about Roger Staubach?

[TommyL31]

My favourite part of the report? How many times the Patriots staff say "F*** Tom" in their texts!

I wonder if Cowboys staff ever spoke that way about Roger Staubach?

Probably never cause dude came straight from the Vietnam War into the league. I bet they said stuff like that about Romo and Aikman though.

Now Cutler, they just say that stuff to his face.

[Dookmarriot]

My favourite part of the report? How many times the Patriots staff say "F*** Tom" in their texts!

I wonder if Cowboys staff ever spoke that way about Roger Staubach?

Probably never cause dude came straight from the Vietnam War into the league. I bet they said stuff like that about Romo and Aikman though.

Now Cutler, they just say that stuff to his face.