O.T. Wells Report out: "More probable than not Patriots altered footballs", Brady likely aware

[toadfoot]

Goodell will rule on the appeal! The NFL sycophants will say he's allowed to, but come on! If they were SO sure of their case, they wouldn't be doing this!

Judge, jury and executioner. Goodell is a joke. If he upholds the original penalty Brady should file a lawsuit against Goodell and the NFL.

 

[DaddyChoc]

Judge, jury and executioner. Goodell is a joke. If he upholds the original penalty Brady should file a lawsuit against Goodell and the NFL.

are you a Patriots fan?

 

[Ouremblem]

Judge, jury and executioner. Goodell is a joke. If he upholds the original penalty Brady should file a lawsuit against Goodell and the NFL.

I can't believe some ESPN reporters are making a big deal over the one employee saying he went to take a leak and there was no urinal in the room. Does this preclude his using a toilet in that room to take a leak? It would take longer. I think Brady should take trump's advise and sue the NFL for $250,000,000. In the beginning I sympathized with goodell over the position he found himself in. Now it seems clear this isn't an objective exercise. I'm a long suffering raider fan who is still miffed over the tuck rule. I have no love for the pats, but players like Richard Sherman egged goodell on saying nothing would be done& now if he accepts anderson's original comment about the guage & reverses it he's a laughing stock. How doesn't Brady sue?

 

[Icebear]

Them he followed bad advise, IMO. He could have turned over his phone records and proven that there was nothing to hide.

When you have union representation you follow their advice.

 

[reno tony]

243-page Wells report is out concluding Patriots "probably" altered footballs.

 

[Icebear]

Them he followed bad advise, IMO. He could have turned over his phone records and proven that there was nothing to hide.

Excuse me, but he has a right to privacy and it is arrogant for you or any of us to decide that we know anything about him or that any situation could be cleared up and his use of a private phone.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

Interesting slant on the Patriots 20,000 word rebuttal. There is a hole in that donut. Robert Kraft came down like a ton of bricks on the Deflator and his cohort. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/one-problem-patriots-20-000-194607455.html

 

[UcMiami]

Interesting situation - if Goodell had not taken the appeal, he would pretty much be admitting that he cannot be objective in any appeal situation and setting serious precedent for every player to demand an 'independent arbitrator'. But having stepped in, he is in an absolute no win situation - anything short of him reducing the penalty to the $50,000 refusal to turn over the phone fine with no suspension and a basic admission that the Wells report was a hatchet job on top of general NFL incompetence at the AFC championship game, will result in Brady taking this to a court to force a neutral arbitrator or a court ruling. And if he does cave to that extent he looks a complete incompetent, and the league offices look even worse than they do currently, and instead of having p'ed off one owner and franchise he will have pe'd off most of the other 31.

And any court or independent arbitrator is going to look at the Wells report and the rebuttal and toss the whole thing out. The science added to the completely inadequate equipment and operators of that equipment just doesn't stand up.

 

[UcMiami]

Interesting slant on the Patriots 20,000 word rebuttal. There is a hole in that donut. Robert Kraft came down like a ton of bricks on the Deflator and his cohort. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/one-problem-patriots-20-000-194607455.html

Well - they do text back and forth about the theft of equipment from the Patriots store rooms, etc. And I would not be surprised if this was also the action of a team trying to 'preempt' the league to show good faith. In fact the wording is pretty interesting in that while the Patriots do the suspension, the league is in charge of when and if they return to duties and what those duties will entail.

And ... if the team was trying to 'cover-up' and 'keep silent' two major players in a conspiracy, one would think suspending them without pay would be a really, really, really bad idea.

 

[toadfoot]

are you a Patriots fan?

I am, but I would have thought that was obvious.

I am however a bigger fan of due process, fairness and conclusions based on fact, none of which are evident in the Wells Report.

 

[easttexastrash]

Excuse me, but he has a right to privacy and it is arrogant for you or any of us to decide that we know anything about him or that any situation could be cleared up and his use of a private phone.

Anyone with any common sense should be able to recognize that by not providing all supporting data to prove his innocence that he is giving the impression that he has something to hide.

 

[Orangutan]

If you actually read the full rebuttal their is an actual text message that uses 'deflate' in exactly this context between the two.

1) There is no chance I'm reading the full rebuttal
2) I did see the other "deflate" text - but I remain unconvinced that "the deflator" was about weight loss. Could be wrong though, certainly have been many times before.

 

[UcMiami]

Very interesting article by a investigative journalist outside of the sporting world:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/08/why-write-about-nfls-deflategate/

 

[Ouremblem]

Interesting situation - if Goodell had not taken the appeal, he would pretty much be admitting that he cannot be objective in any appeal situation and setting serious precedent for every player to demand an 'independent arbitrator'. But having stepped in, he is in an absolute no win situation - anything short of him reducing the penalty to the $50,000 refusal to turn over the phone fine with no suspension and a basic admission that the Wells report was a hatchet job on top of general NFL incompetence at the AFC championship game, will result in Brady taking this to a court to force a neutral arbitrator or a court ruling. And if he does cave to that extent he looks a complete incompetent, and the league offices look even worse than they do currently, and instead of having p'ed off one owner and franchise he will have pe'd off most of the other 31.

And any court or independent arbitrator is going to look at the Wells report and the rebuttal and toss the whole thing out. The science added to the completely inadequate equipment and operators of that equipment just doesn't stand up.

Brady's reputation has been SO destroyed even if goodell lowers the penalty

Anyone with any common sense should be able to recognize that by not providing all supporting data to prove his innocence that he is giving the impression that he has something to hide.

Anyone with any common sense should be able to recognize that by not providing all supporting data to prove his innocence that he is giving the impression that he has something to hide.

Do you remember when Detroit pitcher Justin Verlander's phone was hacked? His private personal photos of Kate Upton and other women were plastered all over the Internet. Given the NFL offices leaks, what if Giselle sent Tom some provocative photos of herself when he was out of town or when she was away doing photo shoots? This is speculation, but Jennifer Lawrence's private photos were hacked as well. Look at this from Brady's point of view. Someone in the NFL office hated him enough to leak this story super bowl week. I'd love to know who leaked it and why? Did that person bet on Seattle heavily and hoped Brady would have a bad super bowl? And Brady is supposed to turn over his phone to these people and trust them not to leak his private thoughts or photos?

 

[UcMiami]

Boy, the league office and the Commissioner are looking worse and worse:
https://nflpaweb.blob.core.windows.net/media/Default/PDFs/Media Resources/Brady_Appeal_Letter.pdf

Don't even know the rules of the CBA in regard to the imposition of discipline.

My biggest take away from this whole four month saga is that for a multi-billion dollar operation, the NFL is run by a bunch of keystone cops. They leak like a sieve, and operate like amateur hour, and get beaten to a pulp by the NFLPA every time they are confronted.

 

[meyers7]

Anyone with any common sense should be able to recognize that by not providing all supporting data to prove his innocence that he is giving the impression that he has something to hide.

Well if there is nothing on his phone that doesn't in itself "prove his innocence". Particularly with an investigator with an agenda. He had nothing to gain by turning it over. He may (may) have nothing to lose, but he had nothing to gain by turning it over.

 

[CL82]

Anyone with any common sense should be able to recognize that by not providing all supporting data to prove his innocence that he is giving the impression that he has something to hide.

Mmm, not a fan of the 4th or 5th admendments are you? While they aren't applicable here, the principal of the vulnerability of the "well I'll just turn over everything and hope for the best" strategy remains the same.

 

[easttexastrash]

Well if there is nothing on his phone that doesn't in itself "prove his innocence". Particularly with an investigator with an agenda. He had nothing to gain by turning it over. He may (may) have nothing to lose, but he had nothing to gain by turning it over.

What he does have to gain is the court of public opinion, which affects his legacy in the game of football. If he is willing to risk that, so be it...it is his right.

 

[easttexastrash]

Brady's reputation has been SO destroyed even if goodell lowers the penalty


Do you remember when Detroit pitcher Justin Verlander's phone was hacked? His private personal photos of Kate Upton and other women were plastered all over the Internet. Given the NFL offices leaks, what if Giselle sent Tom some provocative photos of herself when he was out of town or when she was away doing photo shoots? This is speculation, but Jennifer Lawrence's private photos were hacked as well. Look at this from Brady's point of view. Someone in the NFL office hated him enough to leak this story super bowl week. I'd love to know who leaked it and why? Did that person bet on Seattle heavily and hoped Brady would have a bad super bowl? And Brady is supposed to turn over his phone to these people and trust them not to leak his private thoughts or photos?

He is not going to hand them his phone...geesh...he was to provide the text records from his phone. And only the ones pertaining to this incident.

 

[meyers7]

What he does have to gain is the court of public opinion, which affects his legacy in the game of football. If he is willing to risk that, so be it...it is his right.

Gladly he's not that dumb.

 

[Ouremblem]

He is not going to hand them his phone...geesh...he was to provide the text records from his phone. And only the ones pertaining to this incident.

How is the league going to confirm they have all the relevant texts without looking at Brady's phone? And who determines what may or may not be relevant? Do they read his texts to his wife on the assumption he may have spoken to her about it? At this point I don't believe anything Ted Wells says. His manipulation of Anderson's testimony about which gauge he used tells me all I need to know about Wells.

 

[UcMiami]

1) There is no chance I'm reading the full rebuttal
2) I did see the other "deflate" text - but I remain unconvinced that "the deflator" was about weight loss. Could be wrong though, certainly have been many times before.

An interesting point about this is that there are only a total of two texts spanning a year or more in which 'deflator' or 'deflate' are used - so saying this is his 'nickname' seems a little far fetched. The text in which he identifies himself as the 'deflator' is from the middle of May 2014. A period during which the NFL is not in season and hasn't been for 3+ months and when it will not play its next game until the preseason 2+ months away. This guy hasn't even been at the Patriots facility since January - he works 10 days a year (8 home games and 2 preseason games) and an additional few days if the Pats have home playoff games.
The second 'deflate' usage is for an away game so he is texting from home just before halftime when the assistant was momentarily shown on the broadcast holding a jacket near Revis after Revis had just given up the touchdown pass to the GB Packers.

 

[Kibitzer]

figured I through out a few pot shots to stave off the boredom of mid May.

Ahem.

Throw, not through.

 

[UcMiami]

And for those interested - do a google search on deflate diet weight:
https://www.pinterest.com/marilyn53155/deflate-my-body/
https://www.pinterest.com/kgcj/time-to-deflate-yourself/
http://jeni-fit.com/deflate-your-weight/
http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/weight-loss/tips/advice/get-rid-of-belly-bloat/
Literally thousands of hits - new to me but obviously not that uncommon a usage!

 

[Kibitzer]

You do have a flare for the dramatic.

Ahem.

Flair, not flare.