Badjam wrote:geekor wrote:I'm not a Patriots fan (Cowboys fan), but he never should have been banned 4 games either way.
Do you know 2 other teams were caught with balls much lower than the Patriots in the last 2 years and got fined about 45k? That's it.
Then somehow the "evil" Patriots get caught A) barely below (not the amount falsely reported) and B) explainable by the weather change from going inside to outside in that weather. and they get fined way more, lose draft picks and the QB suspended for 4 games?
If you can't see (like the Judge could, easily I might add) that this was a fallacy of a smear job, then you have problems.
Facts outweigh what people want to believe in this case.
and it's good so Brady will hopefully have no injury on his card next year (see Strat related
)
Why didn't the weather effect the Colts balls also?
Two things:
1 It may have, they checked 4 or 5 of the colts balls and found three of them to be underinflated as well.
2 They didn't check all the Colts balls though obstensibly because they ran out of time.
I believe something was done to the balls by Patriaots staff, if not why fire (or suspend? I have heard conflicting reports on this) the two equipment managers that shared texts with Brady.
I also believe Brady knew about it and that was the reason he wouldn't share his phone
All that said. The NFL in the person of Goodell and those he hired to conduct the Wells report fashioned the report to support their narrative, they did not necessarily go where the facts lead them.
Additionally Goodell way overstepped previous precedent for these types of infractions with the 4 game suspension, when in the past there had only been fines.
I think his weak punishment initially of Ray Rice has lead him to over punish nearly every other issue that has come since.
The real interesting thing to see will be how the other owners react, because at the end of the day, Rodger works for the 32 teams and if this gets any more embarrassing for the league I hope hey will see some sense in not appealing, but as yet that remains to be seen.