And Troy Vincent is the guy at the league office who is determining what if any penalty is to be assessed. Doesn't he have a little conflict of interest here or is it me.
Manipulting the major tool (the ball) is as huge as bounties. The ball is paramount to on field advantages. The By laws say so. We have NE doctoring air in balls after officials sign off on legal balls. Ball rules changed, lobbied by Tom, rule changes, also to the fact that cheating can now be introduced as a cover for the pre-game rubbing, etc. This was a preplanned, premeditated activity. Opportunity available, plan put into place, execute for at least 7 years now. If tom doesn't like balls inflated above 12.5 withint 13.5, then how can he be GOAT? Under the legal 12.5 simply maximized his control factor (cheating), running back and receivers benefit. Look at fumble stat revisiting with more analysis on dome teams, outliers and new statistical models. If the number are looking outlier.....got to be human intervention. It always is. Entire 15 years of NE with BB and Brady (ASTERISK)
Be careful what you wish for with a Brady suspension. Jimmy G could turn out to be an all star with our luck
Finally got to read the entire report. The texts and other evidence Wells compiled was far more compelling than I had anticipated, mainly because of the summary judgment, Kraft's response, and other factors we've heard over the past 100+ days. If anything, "more probable than not" was an understatement. I would have pegged it as "highly probable." So, mea culpa. Objectively speaking, Brady has to be suspended at least for the opener. I would not even protest to something in the range of 4 games. Beyond that, might be a bit excessive... the $25K team fine that's the "on the books" guideline for punishment for improper footballs has to be considered (as it's pretty mild, relatively speaking), but Brady's real mistake here was not owning it. The league will likely come down on him for that more than the actual footballs. It sucks for us Pats fans, but it is what it is. To ignore things like one of the guys referring to himself as "the deflator" would be asinine. I'm a lot of things but unreasonable usually isn't one of them. (Though the missus may disagree there...) The crazy part, which is almost exactly like Spygate, is the "why?" He clearly didn't need an advantage, however minor anyone may think it is, against Indy. He played lights-out against an extremely good defense in the Super Bowl with the cleanest footballs in the history of the sport. A softer ball gives you slightly better grip, resulting in improved accuracy for some throwers, but it takes velocity off the ball. With the give-and-take nature of it, and the possible consequences, and the team's history/reputation fallout from Spygate, it was very foolish of Brady to push the envelope. There are still some holes in the story for me, but I don't think they would change the end result. It's my hope that the Patriots or Brady will come out with something here to try to get final closure on it. The best cure, of course, will be to go out next year and tear it up, and to try to show the world that "yeah, we pushed the rules for an advantage, but we're still the Patriots and we're still going to beat you up." Maybe in the end, this serves as motivation for them to go out there and try to destroy every team in their way. We'll see, I guess. I was wrong. Brady did indeed lie... that's pretty obvious to any objectively-minded person.
You're an upstanding citizen to see the reality man. Bravo. my hat's off to you. Try to convince the other fans who are so buried in the sand of this. At least to admit Brady lied and did wrong....that is amazing in all this
In NFL legalize "more probable than not" means exactly that, "highly probable". They were explaining it on tv last night, that term "more probable than not" is an NFL term to indicate guilty as hell. That is also why that exact phrase was used throughout.
Nah I'm still a jerk. Seriously though, of course I'm still a Pats fan, but that doesn't mean I can't see the truth here. I don't believe for a moment that they won a bunch of games because of this (certainly not the AFC Championship Game where they crushed Indy, or the Super Bowl where they beat Seattle using footballs that were 100% legit), or that it was all that much of a factor, but bottom line, the rules were broken. And it's pretty obvious that Brady didn't own when he should have. The annoying part, like I said, is that this definitely doesn't seem like something that he "needed" to do. Being a "good" fan doesn't mean pulling the wool over your own eyes. It just means that you stick with 'em, even when the shit hits the fan. Sure, some kind of fine would be reasonable. Any monetary fine is going to hurt Brady a lot less than a suspension though. I forget what the winners take home for the Super Bowl but in Brady's world it's chump change. If the league really wants to come down on him, they'll give him at least two games, maybe up to four. If they let him off with just a fine I think they realize that the rest of the NFL and its fans will lose their minds.
Baltimore would also like a word with you. The report shows texts to those guys for that game too. Ooops Blame Joe Flacco for that loss
Two different articles I read today say insiders report a year is on the table although no one thinks that will happen. However if it's even on the table it would make you think he isn't getting off with a slap on the wrist as they usually do up there.
I think the endearing reputation as a cheater will be the only real punishment he will receive. His rep outside Pats fans is shit. He is an all time great but almost like Barry Bonds or Dirty Rodger Clemons he will always be linked to cheating. Don't get me wrong I still think this is a minor offense but the damage is done.
You speak the truth here... barring some kind of miraculous acquittal, this hangs around his neck all the way to Canton.
Is that what some of my fellow Pats fans are saying? I don't know how anyone of reasonable intelligence could read the Wells report and draw that conclusion. I hate to say all of it, but it's true. Too much smoke here for there to be no fire. It's delusional to twist the Patriots into the victims here.
here is the damning texts about what Brady knew and how he interacted around the game http://finance.yahoo.com/news/suspicious-texts-between-tom-brady-151219208.html
