NFL 2015-2016

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Im sure the Nfl is delighted to be making headlines in May, but this is just so tedious.
 
I suppose it also depends on what kind of headlines they end up making. It could all be talk but the murmurs from the Brady side seem very confident and a lot of the "sources" people have seem to be saying Bradys lawyer team is ruthless. The NFL could end up making all the wrong headlines this summer and should that happen they will probably regret creating such a big fiasco themselves. Just the wait and see game now, see who does what next.
 
Washington Post has written a pretty scathing piece slamming the NFL which brings up some interesting points.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...b2d2be-f8b1-11e4-9ef4-1bb7ce3b3fb7_story.html

The evidence is thoroughly equivocal and the competitive advantage is nowhere to be found, yet the NFL is punishing Tom Brady and the New England Patriots as if they belong in Sing Sing. This case, perhaps more than all the others in the past year, sums up the NFL approach to justice: If you crack down hard enough on the little things, no one will notice the real scoundreling.

The NFL chose the wrong case to throw a book at, but then, the league is always far more worried about appearances than reality. So Brady gets a four-game suspension for undermining “the public confidence” in the NFL over an esoteric and unproven matter of air, and his team is stripped of draft choices and $1 million. I see. And what is Roger Goodell’s punishment for turning the entire moral underpinning of the league into sand? The NFL is so desperate to look like a rock of integrity after a year of truly damaging scandals that it has ginned up a case out of literally . . . nothing. A few whiffs of PSI.

DeflateGate would be more of a ‘Gate’ if the league had proven that the balls were in fact deflated. But it hasn’t. That’s what is so peculiar about this entire deal. The Ted Wells report commissioned by the league is perfectly clear on this point: No one is sure which of two gauges were used to check the pressurization of the balls. The gauges gave significantly different readings; one read much higher than the other and showed the balls were legally inflated. The referee in charge of checking the footballs, Walt Anderson, is pretty sure he used this gauge. Yet the NFL disregarded this critical point — and the testimony of their own official. Nevertheless the NFL decided the “preponderance of the evidence” showed Brady and the Patriots manipulated the game balls. That’s how eager they are to find wrongdoing.

Even harder to find is evidence of any actual harm: The Patriots won the AFC championship game, 45-7. In the first half, with the supposedly softer spheroids, Brady completed just 11 of 21 passes with an interception. In the second half, when everyone agrees the game balls were fully pressurized by the reading of any gauge, the Patriots scored four touchdowns and ran away with the game.

Did Brady attempt to influence how much air was in the ball? Sure. Every quarterback in the league is princess-and-the-pea sensitive to the texture and grip of the ball in his hand, and asks equipment managers to inflate them to his preference. If you dock Brady four games, then you have to dock Aaron Rodgers, too. Rodgers admitted to CBS analyst Phil Simms last season that he “pushes the limit” on how much air is in the ball. Rodgers has large hands and likes an extremely hard ball. He told Simms that he tells his equipment guys to “even go over what they allow you to do and see if the officials take the air out of it.” Simms reported this on national television, and no one called it a ‘Gate’ — for the simple reason that it’s not cheating. It’s a preference. And it comes with an equalizing downside. If a softer ball is easier to grip, it also decelerates when you throw it, loses velocity and doesn’t travel as far. If it’s overinflated the way Rodgers likes it, then it travels farther, faster.

Post NFL editor Keith McMillan recruits a few coworkers to see if they can tell which football has been under-inflated by 2 PSI, the amount the NFL claims the New England Patriots' game balls were deflated. (Davin Coburn and Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)
You want a scandal? Greg Hardy. The defensive end has been caught brutalizing his ex-girlfriend four times. For this, he has been docked just 10 games. Brady gets four games for a whiff of air. Hardy gets 10 games, and a new contract with the Dallas Cowboys, for serial beatings.

This is how it goes in Roger Goodell’s NFL. The league throws the book at marijuana tokers to distract from the abominable abuses of NFL doctors when it comes to painkillers. And it throws the book at Brady and the Patriots to rescue the commissioner’s authority after a long hard year during which he misapplied his power in cases of domestic violence and child abuse.

Brady is the league’s attempt to reestablish control over disciplinary issues after the Ray Rice fiasco. The commissioner badly compromised the league by giving Rice just two games for socking his wife when he thought no one was looking. But when a video went viral and it turned out everyone was looking, Goodell made the suspension indefinite, and tried to make it seem like Rice lied to him. A former judge later found Goodell not credible and ruled that he “abused his discretion” in his handling of Rice’s case.

As Brady’s agent, Don Yee, told Fox Sports, “The NFL has a well-documented history of making poor disciplinary decisions that are often overturned when truly independent and neutral judges or arbitrators preside, and a former federal judge has found the commissioner has abused his discretion in the past.”

That’s the real root of this matter: The authority of the commissioner’s office has been badly weakened. The players’ union is lobbying hard to have discipline removed from league office hands and placed into those of a neutral arbitrator. This only makes sense. The owners pay for Goodell’s whopping salary, and this creates a basic conflict of interest. The commissioner is eager to preserve his power. But you don’t establish your authority by handing down a phony hanging-judge sentence in a case that doesn’t merit it. All that does is erode “public confidence” even further.
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The first bit in bold is interesting purely because I have never really thought about the AFC game that way before. As for the second part in bold, I hope that discipline is removed from league office hands and given to a neutral arbitrator.
 
So I finally read the Wells report last night and this morning, reading through this at the moment it has just gone up in the past half hour or so from Brady's legal team.

http://wellsreportcontext.com
 
Well my feeling after the original report came out was that it was weak and had far too many assumptions with very little actual evidence. With this defense I can see the Patriots winning the appeal
 
Just finished the Patriots response in the above link. As I expected and hoped they pretty much tore through what was a fairly weak enough report anyway. Maybe those "sources" were right when they said Brady won't even be banned for one game.
 
iSparky said:
Just finished the Patriots response in the above link. As I expected and hoped they pretty much tore through what was a fairly weak enough report anyway. Maybe those "sources" were right when they said Brady won't even be banned for one game.
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In NFL access, they read a part of the league report, and the league said that the sanctions weren't entirely due to the breach of rules, but mainly because of the lack of cooperation from Brady and the Patriots. So I don't think that the sanctions will be drastically soften.
 
JPRouve said:
In NFL access, they read a part of the league report, and the league said that the sanctions weren't entirely due to the breach of rules, but mainly because of the lack of cooperation from Brady and the Patriots. So I don't think that the sanctions will be drastically soften.
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Yes I heard this too. The Patriots themselves do outline above the level of cooperation they did go through for the report, multiple interviews and complete facility access. They address the amount of interviews carried out to cooperate and then gave reasons to why they didn't cooperate in various instances such as reasons for Brady not turning in his phone.

However, you are more than likely right in terms of the franchise sanctions may not reduce all that much as I think that appeal is in the hands of the NFL however I reckon there is a strong chance of Brady getting off based on the fact that he can have a third party appeal (something I believe the franchise can't have?) and the fact that everyone seems to think his lawyer team is about the best you can have in a scenario like this.
 
The NFLPA has officially filed an appeal and released a brief statement

 
Former Dolphins OL Coach gives some insight to what Ted Wells is like.

Former Dolphins offensive line coach Jim Turner, who was interviewed by Ted Wells as part of the Jonathan Martin-Richie Incognito bullying scandal, went on the attack Thursday on Ted Wells when appearing onSirius XM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio.

“When you sit in front of them, they are under attack,” Turner said. “There are accusations. It’s obvious they have an agenda and in my case their agenda was to defend [Jonathan] Martin at all costs. It was clear by the questioning. It was easy to see. To be honest with you, when you’re sitting across from him, I’ll be honest, it was almost laughable when I was sitting there because it was almost like I was in the movie Office Space and I was sitting across from Bob and Bob. I’m looking at these guys and what could these two lawyers — what could they possibly understand about a NFL locker room?”

Turner said he understands why Tom Brady didn’t hand over his cell phone to him.

“One thing stands out to me and it is just how smart Tom Brady is,” he said. “He didn’t trust the Wells Report. He didn’t trust Wells. If he did, he would have complied a little more. From my experience I see the crossover between things that are happening to the Patriots right now and things that happened to me. Wells is not a good human being. When I didn’t give him the stories he wanted, he targeted me as part of a problem in Miami. He’s not an independent investigator. He’s not doing it looking at both sides of the situation. He’s hired by the NFL and he’s going to print the story they wanted printed.”

Added Turner: “100 percent — Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, I wouldn’t say a word. Independent investigator, my [expletive].”

Turner was fired by the Dolphins following the report back in February of 2014.
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If Goodell does not reduce the Brady punishment, which he more than likely wont due to the fact that despite Troy Vincents name being on the punishment it would more than likely have had a big hand in there from Goodell himself then this is going to drag on much longer. If Goodell decides after appeal that the punishment stands after rejecting the request for third party arbitration then you can pretty much guarantee this is going to court, Brady wouldn't have assembled an all start legal team if that was not one of the intentions should an appeal fail. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if his legal team suspected that the appeal would be overseen by Goodell all along and are just going through the motions.

Its a stupid move from Goodell really to put himself right smack in the middle of all this and leave an appeal decision in his own hands because he won't win now either way. Drop too much and the other owners along with other fans turn on him, drop too little or not at all and the Patriots will more than likely sue him. I get the impression he feels he has lost control and has elected himself to try get it back, problem is this has gone on for so long now and they created such a circus of it that there is a huge spotlight on the NFL and what they do next. The whole world is pretty much watching at this point, sure I saw Sky News running this story recently all about deflategate.
 
Of course he won't drop it, he will pretty much need to be seen backing his own people in the NFL. This is all just going through the motions really at this point, the sweet bit now is that Goodell has gone and plonked himself even more smack bang in the middle of all this. Like I said, he won't win either way now.
 
dxadel said:
How do you pick a team as a non american with 5 years of knowledge?
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You don't, you watch games and one day you will realize that you care more about a team in particular.
 
dxadel said:
Did it work for you? if so what team and when did you realise (if you dont mind me asking).
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I used to watch games when I was a kid, I didn't know the rules or the players but I liked it. With time I realized that I cared more about the Vikings than any other team.
 
dxadel said:
How do you pick a team as a non american with 5 years of knowledge?
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I started last year by doing this...

Step 1: Have you visited US or have friends/relatives here? See is the team they support interests you. You have someone to guide and banter.
Step 2: There are lots of lame ass quizzes on "which NFL team is for you" or "which NFL team should I support" and stuff. Do a couple of those and see if you get any repeat team in different quizzes. Gets you a shortlist.
Step 3: Read top 3 teams in above shortlist, history, achievements etc and pick one which interests you.

For me it was between Yankees (I live in NY now) and Packers (made all 3 lame ass quiz results i took). I chose Packers because it had ties with Man Utd, Green/Gold, Fergie likes Lombardi etc. Worked out well, I should say.
 
I picked the Lions because @Eboue supports them and he was explaining the NFL rules to me at the time.

Also because they're the greatest team on earth #OnePride #DefendTheDen #LionsNation
 
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