Under-inflated balls!

Fine...but disagree with what part?

Do you feel that Brady should receive more than 2 game suspension? If so, how many games should he be levied.

All of this is based on some circumstantial evidence. no material evidence has been presented. Where is the justice there? Furthermore, so far there has not been a legal investigation as this recent revelation of investigation from Ted Wells (NFL's attorney) is an NFL investigation. It remains to be seen in a court of law what will develop. Let's see if there's an appeal by close of the day on Thursday.

The only ones to benefit from all of this is/are the lawyers. NFL is not in a better shape when the dust settles from this.

That it's overboard.
I will agree that the punishment for other stuff is inconsistent to the point of craziness, and that politics/money/bla bla have a lot to do with everything.

Yup. I'm with you there. Let's see how this turn out if appealed.
Meanwhile, Football as the goose that laid the golden egg, sputters and may suffer.

Right now, all of this is a lot of posturing...for media attention. Let's see where this goes in a court of law. `

What'll be interesting is when substitute QB, Garoppolo goes in. Watch him go nuts and win 3 out of 4 games or whatever his turn at QB will be.

I was trying to describe to myself what I think of this episode with the Pats and came up with the word slicky. Where did that come from? A few seconds later I remembered a book title - Slicky Boys, by Martin Limon.

edit to show another link as the first didn't work -
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/329225.Slicky_Boys

My long time favorite crime books are by many different authors under the Soho Press (in this case, the Soh0 Crime division of the company). This one is set in Korea. That's another reason I like their books, as the authors write about stuff in a lot of different countries. I've read maybe fifty of them (still have those), and remember disliking only one. That's quite a percentage.



Slicky also fits Goodell, of course.

Well, that word could fit all of them. They's all slicky.

Bottom line though, the fan gets screwed...because pro ball is no better off after all of this sorts out.

The big problem is how inconsistent the punishment is. Teams recently have been caught breaking rules several times in ways that could impact the game; one team pumped in artificial crowd noise, another team heated the footballs, another team rubbed sticky towels on the balls...

All of these infractions resulted in minor fines with no suspensions and no lost draft picks.

If the rules were enforced fairly so that all of the teams were treated equally when they broke rules, then the NFL would have a leg to stand on.

I think a bigger problem re labor is that the NFL made the decision to make an example out of a guy who is much loved and who has gone out of his way to promote the NFL. Labor right now has to be at least questioning weather everyone is playing on the same team. If the NFL will go way out of their way to **** Tom Brady as they did here then they will do it to anyone.

I am expecting the NFL to back most of the way down, like they did with the Saints.

Whoa, baby! You were cruising fine until that last sentence. The Saints were screwed...NFL and the current Commish didn't back way down on the Saints. Ask the coach who had to sit down a whole year after Bounty-gate. Then there was LB Jonathan Vilma...and the Offensive Coordinator Williams who proposed the bounty system as well as a few other lesser lights.

It took a committee headed by former Commish Tagliabue to reverse and overrule Goodell on some of this but...Vilma due to rust and a knee injury operation will never play in NFL again.

No way, baby! They were punished big time.

Some quarterbacks like the ball inflated as much as possible.

Some like it softer.

Why do the QB's who like it inflated as much as possible get that advantage? (Why are so many here advocating that those QB's should have that advantage?)

Why not let the QB's decide what pressure they want...and use that pressure?

I hate what I consider cheating...but the rule itself makes almost no sense.

NFL investigator: Direct evidence shows Brady knew about deflated footballs

NEW YORK -- The lawyer who investigated the New England Patriots insisted Tuesday that he found direct, not just circumstantial, evidence to show quarterback Tom Brady knew about employees deflating footballs.

Miffed by criticism from Brady's agent, Ted Wells decided to take the unusual step of holding a conference call with reporters, a day after the NFL suspended the Super Bowl MVP for the season's first four games based on the report.


Wells said his findings would have been strong enough to convince a jury under the "preponderance of evidence" standard, which is used in many civil cases.

I think Ted Wells would have more difficulty convincing a jury under the "preponderance of evidence" standard than he lets on. In such a jury trial there are standards of evidence and the other side gets to present their case.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Direct+Evidence


http://courts.uslegal.com/burden-of-proof/preponderance-of-the-evidence/

I think these boys are making up the English language as they go, because using English as everyone else does has this guy bragging on evidence and then claiming that it is not clear and convincing.

How 'bout them Red Sox?!

He's there doing the work. You are just sitting at a computer supposing.

Will let you know,,,,,I take a look at them Sunday with a daughter.

Enjoy the game!

(The insanity of Fenway ticket prices means I see a game at the park maybe
once a year.)

Wells has been doing the work in a very one-sided way.... and now he has someone who is doing the work on the other side. I suspect that the Wells Report will continue to unravel as it is questioned.

and in the meantime I'm enjoying all of the fabulous Tom Brady soft balls memes

By the end of New England's rebuttal, the Patriots seem nuttier than those folks who continue to insist the moon landing is a hoax.

For example, team employees Jim McNally and John Jastremski were talking about losing weight, not siphoning air out of footballs, when they used "deflate" in their texts. So when McNally called himself "the deflator," he was just poking fun at himself and his struggles with his weight.

Seriously.

The Patriots explain the increase in texts and phone calls between Brady and Jastremski after Deflategate broke, in part, as Brady looking out for Jastremski. Brady was used to the limelight and critics, the Patriots said, Jastremski was not.

"Mr. Brady's reaching out to Mr. Jastremski to see how he was holding up in these circumstances is not only understandable, but commendable," the Patriots wrote.

In that case, Brady should reconsider the appeal of his four-game suspension he filed Thursday, and instead lobby for sainthood.

The other explanation for the flurry of communication, the Patriots said, was business. The Super Bowl was coming up, and Brady wanted to talk to Jastremski about when the balls would be prepared, when he could practice with them, when they'd be shipped to Arizona, when he could use them in Arizona.

"Footballs needed to be prepared for the Super Bowl. Since this was Mr. Jastremski's first Super Bowl experience since assuming the role as game football preparer, it is not surprising he and Mr. Brady spoke a lot about football preparation during the days after the AFC Championship Game," the Patriots explained.

In other words, Brady was meticulous about the footballs he used. This was backed up by his fury at discovering the footballs in the Jets game had been over-inflated, with Brady going so far as to ask that officials be shown a copy of the NFL rule for PSI range before future games.

And yet, when it came to being able to tell whether a ball was under-inflated or over-inflated, Brady had no idea.

"What Mr. Brady explained to the investigators is that the consistency of the footballs and their tactile feel are most important to him, and he cannot even tell the difference if a football is within regulation or a psi or so above or below regulation," the Patriots explained.


USA TODAY
Patriots QB Tom Brady officially appeals Deflategate suspension

Nor, despite wanting to be sure the footballs he selected for the games were the ones he actually used, did Brady have a clue what happened after officials approved them. How they got to the field, who took them there — those were details that didn't concern him.

Note to Brady's agent, Don Yee. Rather than being incensed Ted Wells left Brady's testimony out of his report, you should have been thrilled.

What of McNally's minute-and-40-second detour to a bathroom near the field when he had the game balls? That really was to go to the bathroom, the Patriots said. With almost 20 minutes left before the start of the game, McNally wouldn't have needed to rush if he'd gone in there to deflate the footballs.

Except that someone might have noticed if he'd disappeared for longer. Or that, with so much time before the game, he could have used the bathroom in the officials' locker room. You know, the one he usually used.

And the best part of all is the website the Patriots set up for their rebuttal, "wellsreportcontext.com," as if they're some kind of truthers.

The Patriots and their high-priced attorneys were on to something when they went after the NFL's science. Chang Kee Jung, a physics professor at SUNY at Stony Brook, told USA TODAY Sports that it's the variances between the Colts and the Patriots footballs that's important. Not, as the Patriots argue, the different gauges.

But there has been enough suspicion about the NFL and its methodology that the Patriots could have won over a lot of doubters if they'd stuck with their first line of defense. Instead, they kept on going.

Right off a cliff.