How is it ridiculous for an ongoing investigation? As new information turns up, new questions emerge. I don't question the Patriots decision to not make him available again, but I don't think there is anything strange or unusual about the request.
#DFG: Canceling the Noise
- Thread starter nattysez
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No offense, but this is what I expect sports talk to sound like tomorrow. For those trying to say Wells was unbiased. Outside of a few texts, this report added absolutely nothing. if anything, I'd take that McNally disliked Brady and I see no way that a pair of Uggs stands in the way of him throwing Tom under the bus.86spike said:
I hadn't seen that detail. That mitigates the negativity some, but Wells clearly had something he wanted to talk to McNally about and the refusal of access was enough for him to make a note that it hindered his investigation.jmcc5400 said:
Again, that is less than full cooperation and it wouldn't surprise me if Goodell cites that when he levies punishment (which I predict will be fines for the team and TB, but no suspensions).
DennyDoyle'sBoil said:
There's a reasonable point that by that point the Pats saw where this was going and they just didn't produce the guy because at that point they're only giving more ammo to a guy who's pointing a gun at them.
This works pretty well for the NFL, doesn't it?
A couple of days of free publicity during the post-draft doldrums, and buries the previously leading story of every team in the NFL reaching out to a guy who still hasn't been cleared in the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend.
A couple of days of free publicity during the post-draft doldrums, and buries the previously leading story of every team in the NFL reaching out to a guy who still hasn't been cleared in the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend.
Do we know if any of the first 4 McNally interviews happened after they had McNally and Jastremski's phone records?
Are the phone records really going to be a last resort for Wells? Wasn't there a story early on that they were just waiting for McNally to flip? Wells was obviously feeding to Goodell and his buddy Kensil to find a smoking gun. Instead they more likely than not found something that would infer that Brady most likely had some knowledge of the situation. The wording is ridiculous.86spike said:
This is the section of the report about the denial of another interview:
I'll be curious if Wells responds to Kraft's point as confirmation or rebuttal of Kraft's take on it. Will it just stay as He Said/She Said?
Kraft says it was a request for a fifth interview, but a Wells seems to disagree (and takes a very strong stance on it)
I'll be curious if Wells responds to Kraft's point as confirmation or rebuttal of Kraft's take on it. Will it just stay as He Said/She Said?
Spike, I will just say that making the statement that not being able to interview McNally again was unhelpful without acknowledging that four prior interviews had been conducted previously - which is referred to in Kraft's press release - is not consistent with the proposition that this is an "Impartial and independent" investigation. Same with the retention of Exponent. This report is slanted and intended to be a persuasive statement notwithstanding any veneer of impartiality. That doesn't mean that the report is wrong. But we haven't heard the other side of this yet - and maybe we won't if the penalty is de minimis.
amarshal2 said:
They're not really an engineering firm they are an expert witness firm, i.e. professional opinions for lawyers and corporations.
Basically they stand on a mountain of assumptions and say that it doesn't match a model of prediction. It all starts on page 198.
One of many problems is with this:
We know that they stopped measurings the Colts footballs because they ran out of time, which they claim was 13 minutes, not 9.5.
The section Spike quoted on the alleged non-cooperation in violation of League rules, whether accurate or not, differentiates this case from the recent cases involving both the Browns and the Falcons. I will feel fortunate if we don't lose a first round pick.
Of course Wells won't respond, because he and his firm are withholding information. The entire review was one big FU to the Pats. I'm sorry, but I have read the "report" and it is nothing more than a slandering tabloid, one that I could see written by TMZ. You think Robert Kraft will lie when there are obvious records that would contradict that statement?
I feel like he kind of has to. He said, in an official statement not an offhand remark, that part of the report was dubiously reported at best and an outright lie at worst.86spike said:
page 9:86spike said:
page 28 [footnote 3]:
Wells characterized in the summary, etc. that the Patriots didn't make him available - and yet he acknowledges in a couple of places (at least 2 above) that there were interviews plural. Given that - I think we can take the Patriots at face with their public statement of 4 interviews and they declined a 5th. And any investigator that can't get all their questions answered in 4 interview sessions sucks at their job or is intentionally stringing things out fishing. And since he is really a part time employee then that is unreasonable in my book.
Lie? Of course not. Be mistaken? I think that is more likely than Well's report being wrong, though that too is possible.
Edit: With regard to the page 9 quote that RetractableRoof just posted -- it says that interview was conducted by members of NFL security. Seems likely that Wells' team only got to interview McNally once and weren't counting additional interviews that McNally conducted with other NFL reps.
You can debate the science until the cows come home, and it's never going to register with me because I'm just never going to invest the energy to learn it. (Nor will the press, any arbitrator or the public, which is why the argument from the Pats' standpoint is a loser).
There is no room for debate on whether they produced this witness for interviews on four occasions. They either did it didn't, and the four meetings, if they occurred, will be documented in spades. That is very easy to prove one way or another.
There is no room for debate on whether they produced this witness for interviews on four occasions. They either did it didn't, and the four meetings, if they occurred, will be documented in spades. That is very easy to prove one way or another.
The four interviews referenced by Kraft in his statement are not discussed by Wells. Here's what he says about the order of the interview of McNally and the discovery of the texts, from footnote 47 of the report:86spike said:
"Our investigation did not discover these messages until after our initial interview with McNally. In response to our request for a follow-up interview, rather than producing McNally, counsel for the Patriots tried to negotiate terms, requested that interview topics be provided in advance and offered to “consider” the use of written interrogatories, all of which we declined as inappropriate and inconsistent with our reliance on traditional investigative methods. We reiterated our offer to conduct our follow-up interview of McNally at any time or location convenient to McNally, but counsel for the Patriots refused."
I interpret "discover" as them as having the messages in their possession, but their junior associate didn't notice/find it by then, quite honestly. Given that Kraft says there were four interviews but Wells doesn't say the same thing, it's impossible to know after which interview Wells' team "discovered" the texts.
If they had really interviewed him four times before finding these messages, I'm less sympathetic to Wells' complaints and somewhat concerned about his investigatory techniques, but if there really was only one prior interview, presumably early on in the process, I do see the failure of McNally testifying a second time to be not particularly sterling on the franchise's part. I do find it hard to credit Kraft making something up so blatantly like that in his statement. It is also possible that Kraft's count includes interview(s) by league officials prior to Wells' team making their appearance.
For me, the fact that the NFL doesn't specifically document the psi of the balls pregame what's the point of even checking them?
Whichever way it actually went, it's been papered six ways from Sunday. I doubt very much that Kraft would lie about the only specific he chose to dispute. His statement actually sounded to me like his counsel was furious with a half truth, and if Wells was lying by omission on this one, that's a real credibility issue, because there's no real reason to fuck the dog there.86spike said:
Put it this way, none of us from that world commenting in this thread would put an incomplete version of that in a brief as an advocate, let alone a report as an objective investigator. You don't fuck another member of the bar like that without expecting to get fucked by the tribunal.
As more information comes out about the review, I think it's more likely that Wells left information out. Why feel the need to make a point that the Patriots did not allow a follow up interview, when there obviously had been many. I guess it is possible that Wells is dense and did not think how this report would be viewed. Far more likely is this was one big circle jerk for the NFL and they are all laughing about it now.EvilEmpire said:
Wells liberally employed omission, selective emphasis and prejudicial framing throughout.
Well done!
Well done!
Here's the quote from page 9 of the report that RetractableRoof posted again:
I read all this as McNally was interviewed several times by NFL security or other representatives. Then Wells comes on board. They have everything the NFL has already gathered. Then they interview McNally once. Then they work it some more, develop more questions, and ask to talk to him again. They get denied.
That is what seems most reasonable to me. But I'm not operating from the assumption that Wells and his team were being shady, so YMMV.
After 103 days, endless hours of hot-take media coverage, however many pages this beast of a thread is up to, it still hits me in the face every so often: this is the single stupidist, non-story/ faux scandal in my lifetime of following sports. Which is roughly 40 years or so. All of this kerfufel over a fraction of psi on a football that most people wouldn't even notice with a squeeze test. And that had zero competitive impact on any football game played, ever. And was invited by the league when they allowed QB's to customize their game day footballs in the first place. Done, no doubt, in the name of more offense, better ratings, hooking in more fantasy football players, etc. And that same league now treats it like the crime of the century, taking longer to "investigate" than many murder trials do. We have officially lost our fucking minds in this country...................... Apologies for the game-thread level rant.
Rudy Pemberton said:
Basic human decency? The guy stands a good chance of getting canned by his employer if he has to miss work a fifth time over an investigation into potential misconduct at another part time job.
For all the hate Florio gets here, he is calling Wells out on that right now. Sorry I cannot link. Maybe somebody can. Butt latest on PFT says,
NFL had opportunity to avoid Deflategate. Then Florio says that a footnote in the report denies a sting, but the overall report makes it rather clear that this is exactly what this was.
NFL had opportunity to avoid Deflategate. Then Florio says that a footnote in the report denies a sting, but the overall report makes it rather clear that this is exactly what this was.
You can just skip over the "science" altogether- the problem is clearly evident in the words they use.dcmissle said:
The Wells report text cited Exponent's appendix extensively and said it incriminated the Patriots. The Exponent appendix said the Patriots must be at fault, as long as one assumes several numbers /that Wells supplied to them./
Exponent repeatedly says their Wells-cited conclusions are valid only assuming Wells' numbers are true. Together its a neat trick of circular logic. Begging the question, even.
As was said above, any cross examination or peer review would tear big holes in the Exponent appendix. That would happen at arbitration.
I agree the only way any pro-Brady argument registers with the public is if Kraft puts up a fight and gets the other side out there. Which he likely will not.
I think the four interviews are spelled out by Wells, actually. He notes (page 58) that McNally was interviewed three times by NFL Security, and notes elsewhere that his firm interviewed McNally in February 2015. So, that's four interviews, but only once by Paul, Weiss. Wells is right that he didn't get a follow-up interview, but Kraft is right that his employee had already put up with four interviews.
The report has a reference to three interviews of McNally by NFL security...I assumed Wells team got one interview separately. So it's Wells request for their 2nd and 5th overall86spike said:
Well... I'm back to my original thoughts on this. It looks very bad for the Pats when presented as "we found more evidence and their lawyers blocked us. Even if it was a fifth meeting request, NE promised (and is obligated by league rules) to fully cooperate.HowBoutDemSox said:
Even as someone who thinks ball shenanigans happen in every locker room and that the "crime" is overblown to hell, this is a really bad look and I think Goodell is going to unload because of it.
Obstructing the investigation might be the biggest sin in his eyes.
Sorry about defective post above. The crucial scientific sleight - of - hand here involves the assumption that the halftime measurements of the Pats' balls were not performed in the first few minutes and that the Colts balls were not performed in the last few (as seems most likely, given the delayed start of the 2d half). The asyntotic part of the curve for rising psi with warming temperature makes the time of the measurements crucial - a subject that would make for vivid cross examination of the physicists, we're that ever to happen. That rapidly rising curve also goes far to explain the variability of results for the Pats' balls -- for which the litigation experts claim there is no other explanation than a suspicious one. The weasel language about accepting PW's assumptions on when the measurements were made (in the absence of facts) is the essence of expert - witness slick.Rosey Ruzicka said:
Wells states that the request for another meeting came after they found the McNally-Jastremski messages. Seems like a perfectly reasonable reason to ask for a follow up.LuckyBen said:
Also note that he says the Patriots lawyers did not refuse them outright. NE attorneys asked to get the questions ahead of time or do the interview in writing.
That's shady.
No it's not, it's just a lawyer doing their job. Why another face to face if it can be cleared up with a letter?86spike said:
Did they not think to get phone records before the initial interview? Were they dicking around? More likely they were given information, from the colts, NFL? I have a hard time understanding how when the NFL is investigating the Patriots, and it's clear that they looked at no other avenues, that the Patriots should be totally complicate. After all of the leaks, why should Brady trust the NFL with his phone? Why should the Patriots help to their fullest when it can only paint them in a bad light?86spike said: