#DFG: Canceling the Noise

Is there any level of suspension that you would advise Tom to accept?


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Sportsbstn

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Harry Hooper said:
 
 
Solved for less than $2+ million. It sure reads like a joke about JJ looking fat/pumped up in that jacket.
 
Yep, when I first read it, like many believed Im sure, it sounded like BS.   But I would love to hear Wells respond to it now that it has more context and evidence behind it.
 

Harry Hooper

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Shelterdog said:
 
Sure.  Do you think he liked having to run damage control? For fuck's sake it's Goodell's goddamn job to run damage control for the league and the owners, not the other way around.
 
 
Maybe not, but he had already rescued the CBA negotiations before. Hard to say what Kraft's motivations were. Was he protecting his investment or something else?
 

MarcSullivaFan

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LuckyBen said:
Why did it work for Rice and Peterson?
Rice was not a petition to vacate. Goodell appointed a former judge to hear Rice's appeal.

The arguments in the Peterson case were entirely different. The main issue was that the league was attempting to apply a new disciplinary scheme to an offense that occurred before the scheme was implemented. It was a pretty obvious overreach.

In any event, I practice in this area, so believe me when I tell you that these petitions are very rarely granted.
 

Sportsbstn

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riboflav said:
Is RG calling TB's bluff here? Why would Goodell do this if he thinks TB will sue?
 
Would not be the first time Goodell has made a boneheaded decision.   Or the 2nd...or the 3rd...
 

DJnVa

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Ferm Sheller said:
Jastremski looked "overinflated" on the sidelines and JM told him to deflate? Huh?
 
It's almost like Jastremski is a bit of a dolt and his texts aren't easily explainable by anyone else.
 

cshea

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Well the appeal is a waste of time. Goodell set this whole thing up this way. "I'll stay out of it, Wells will investigate and Troy will discipline. Therefore I'm neutral."
 
It was likely headed this way, but we're on to the courts.
 
After reading the Pats rebuttal today, the most damning thing to me is the league leaks, and the league being content on hanging a marquee franchise and iconic player out to dry based on leaks of misinformation. Despite the Pats request, no effort was made by the league to correct the misinformation nor would they allow Wells to investigate the league. That's amazing.
 

Myt1

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Shelterdog said:
 
Just because Kraft publicly supported RG doesn't mean he actually thought RG was a good guy or good at his job.  Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, maybe he was just taking a hit for the good of the league because that schmuck of a commissioner fucked up the ray rice case.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUqytjlHNIM
 
Just trying to break up The Godfather references.  ;)
 

86spike

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kartvelo said:
However, nothing happened to the balls.
Disagree

What the rebuttal math is saying is that it is possible that most of the balls were simply effected by weather and that Wells' math is not the absolute he claims it is due to several friendly assumptions which may not have been the case.

That is different from saying "nothing happened to the balls becuz SCIENCE".

I find this reasoning compelling as an argument that the Wells Report is flawed.

I do not find it compelling as absolute proof that nothing happened to the balls.

It casts serious doubt on Wells' conclusions and should be considered in the appeal.
 

JimBoSox9

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DrewDawg said:
 
Despite the fact that SCIENCE! says it could have been nothing?
 
Despite that fact that there IS NOT ONE text referencing Brady wanting balls below the 12.5?
The actual or target PSI numbers, all the science and hard numbers are meaningless to the point you are responding to. What matters is whether they thought the refs were returning the balls to them at sub-optimal levels. I can accept both your Despites and remain of the belief that Brady ordered post-ref tinkering, should I so choose. The hill you should be Despiting on is the 16 psi text.
 

lambeau

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Roger can either appear statesmanlike by being magnanimous with TB, or be stubborn and get humiliated in federal court. We'll see if he's learned anything.
 

Ed Hillel

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garzooma said:
Sounds good, but why didn't the rebuttal use this?  Presumably, they talked to Jastremski & McNally and just asked them what was meant.
 
How would the rebuttal use it, exactly? Attach a picture? Possible, I guess, but it's pretty obvious what it means now.
 

nattysez

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Ferm Sheller said:
Jastremski looked "overinflated" on the sidelines and JM told him to deflate? Huh?
 
He's wearing a big, "puffy" coat, and JM told him to "deflate" the coat and give it to someone else.
 
FWIW, I'm at the point now that I think there's political stuff going on behind the scenes that we don't know about, and Goodell is trying to send some kind of message through this proceeding.  Either that or Goodell is so unfathomably arrogant that he thought, "Well, the last time I let a neutral handle one of these hearings, they reversed me.  I guess I'd better do this myself so I can be sure the penalty doesn't get reversed."  
 

GeorgeCostanza

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Harry Hooper said:
In addition to the difficulty of an outsider interpreting what intimates are texting each other, there's the added confounding factor of autocorrect on cellphones perhaps altering some of the key words.
Good point. I've made some posts on here where autocorrect made me out to be a racist. But some of my closest friends are black!
 

Harry Hooper

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Super Nomario said:
I'm not sure I'd go this far. What's fair to say is that there is a reasonable set of assumptions which the Wells report uses that suggest the halftime conditions of some of the balls can't be explained by normal physics, and another reasonable set of assumptions where the majority of them can be.
 
 
 
You've said this before, but why not do some simulations and testing, such as of the Pats specific ball prep or of an hour of football playing in cold & wet, rather than relying on assumptions? I am reminded of the physicist who forcefully argued that curveballs were all an optical illusion. His assumption of a smooth spherical baseball left out the impact of the raised seams.
 
 
Edited for clarity.
 

PaulinMyrBch

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I think the commish planned on hearing it all along. Passes off the investigation, passes off the punishment to Vincent. So now in his mind, he doesn't have his hands dirty and he gets to hear the appeal, as if he's some kind of neutral in this. I don't think its reactionary, I think he decided to hear the appeal when he gave Vincent the task of doling out punishment, or possibly earlier than that.
 

MarcSullivaFan

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nattysez said:
 
He's wearing a big, "puffy" coat, and JM told him to "deflate" the coat and give it to someone else.
 
FWIW, I'm at the point now that I think there's political stuff going on behind the scenes that we don't know about, and Goodell is trying to send some kind of message through this proceeding.  Either that or Goodell is so unfathomably arrogant that he thought, "Well, the last time I let a neutral handle one of these hearings, they reversed me.  I guess I'd better do this myself so I can be sure the penalty doesn't get reversed."  
He leaned his lesson in the Rice case after that retired judge ripped him a new one. It will be Roger or Pals from now on.
 

Myt1

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86spike said:
Disagree

What the rebuttal math is saying is that it is possible that most of the balls were simply effected by weather and that Wells' math is not the absolute he claims it is due to several friendly assumptions which may not have been the case.

That is different from saying "nothing happened to the balls becuz SCIENCE".

I find this reasoning compelling as an argument that the Wells Report is flawed.

I do not find it compelling as absolute proof that nothing happened to the balls.

It casts serious doubt on Wells' conclusions and should be considered in the appeal.
That's the ballgame, though.
 
You probably need two elements to punish Brady:
 
1.  That McNally deflated the balls post inspection; and
2.  That he did so at Brady's behest or with Brady's knowledge.
 
If there's serious doubt as to element 1, you don't meet the preponderance of the evidence standard.
 
As I said before, even if you think there's a 70% chance of each element, you still don't meet the preponderance of the evidence standard.
 

Tito's Pullover

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I wouldn't be surprised if Roger reduced the suspension but did not eliminate it entirely, basically daring Brady to sue even though he'll look petulant for doing so.  They're be plenty of people - even Pats fans - who will say that Brady should just take two games and move on, but I don't think Brady will settle for anything more than zero games.  And he shouldn't.
 

Ferm Sheller

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So, JM wrote deflate and deflator on two separate occasions in his texts to JJ and in completely different contexts (losing weight and letting the air out of a jacket). If that's true, that's some real buzzard luck. I must have a million texts on my phone and I bet I haven't used deflate or deflator once.
 

riboflav

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Tito's Pullover said:
I wouldn't be surprised if Roger reduced the suspension but did not eliminate it entirely, basically daring Brady to sue even though he'll look petulant for doing so.  They're be plenty of people - even Pats fans - who will say that Brady should just take two games and move on, but I don't think Brady will settle for anything more than zero games.  And he shouldn't.
 Disagree. There is literally nothing the NFL or RG have done since this stupid, made-up scandal broke that suggests that he will do anything other than deny Brady's appeal completely.
 

Mystic Merlin

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nattysez said:
 
He's wearing a big, "puffy" coat, and JM told him to "deflate" the coat and give it to someone else.
 
FWIW, I'm at the point now that I think there's political stuff going on behind the scenes that we don't know about, and Goodell is trying to send some kind of message through this proceeding.  Either that or Goodell is so unfathomably arrogant that he thought, "Well, the last time I let a neutral handle one of these hearings, they reversed me.  I guess I'd better do this myself so I can be sure the penalty doesn't get reversed."  
Goodell is the kind of guy who perceives decisive smackdowns of defiance as indicative of true authority and control. He doesn't understand any other way.

He feels compelled to 'send strong messages'. That way no will dare to step out of line ever again.
 

Stitch01

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dcmissle said:
I think he was prepared to cut the Oats' penalty a bit too. Say a second-rounder instead of a first. A fifth-rounder instead of a fourth. Until this morning ...
Why in the world would you think that? Like its ROG, so literally anything is possible. Given he listened for public consensus before publishing and then sent Ted Wells out to double down, and given your plausible thesis that he is worried about the suspension sticking so he hit the team too, why would he reduce the penalty?

Remember, for every non Pat fan that thinks thus was overkill (and let's be real, those fans aren't losing sleep over it) there's a group that think ROG was lenient for not suspending Brady and BB for the season (BB under the Payton precedent). There's no reason he'd relent on team penalties.
 

jimbobim

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PaulinMyrBch said:
I think the commish planned on hearing it all along. Passes off the investigation, passes off the punishment to Vincent. So now in his mind, he doesn't have his hands dirty and he gets to hear the appeal, as if he's some kind of neutral in this. I don't think its reactionary, I think he decided to hear the appeal when he gave Vincent the task of doling out punishment, or possibly earlier than that.
To use a Mike Silver quote. RG is insulting everyones intelligence saying he is a neutral entity. Maybe in his own ESPN NFL Network world but getting a neutral has been one of the whole reasons for this back and forth this week. 
 

SemperFidelisSox

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cshea said:
Well the appeal is a waste of time. Goodell set this whole thing up this way. "I'll stay out of it, Wells will investigate and Troy will discipline. Therefore I'm neutral."
Yup. Even though the league is the villain in this story in many of our minds, you do have to give the bad guys credit sometimes. If this whole thing really was a set up from the very beginning, they executed it brilliantly.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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PaulinMyrBch said:
I think the commish planned on hearing it all along. Passes off the investigation, passes off the punishment to Vincent. So now in his mind, he doesn't have his hands dirty and he gets to hear the appeal, as if he's some kind of neutral in this. I don't think its reactionary, I think he decided to hear the appeal when he gave Vincent the task of doling out punishment, or possibly earlier than that.
I think an equally likely scenario is that with people pointing out holes in the report, he simply cannot risk an arbitrator writing a scathing opinion undermining it. He would rather take his chances in court where the standard is higher. This is a bold power play and has pretty much blocked the one realistic avenue for Brady to make his point. An arbitrator ruling raching a conclusion opposite to Wells would have been devastating to Goodell. He has blocked that opportunity.
 

riboflav

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SemperFidelisSox said:
Yup. Even though the league is the villain in this story in many of our minds, you do have to give the bad guys credit sometimes. If this whole thing really was a set up from the very beginning, they executed it brilliantly.
 
Well, they actually made a lot of mistakes but one thing they did very well was to rely on Americans' collective stupidity to bail them out when the facts couldn't.
 

Harry Hooper

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Ferm Sheller said:
So, JM wrote deflate and deflator on two separate occasions in his texts to JJ and in completely different contexts (losing weight and letting the air out of a jacket). If that's true, that's some real buzzard luck. I must have a million texts on my phone and I bet I haven't used deflate or deflator once.
 
 
Why are they different? They're both about losing weight, just apparent weight in the second instance.
 

Koufax

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Recall that the rumor just before the 4 game suspension came down was that the suspension was going to be 8 games.   I wouldn't be surprised if, in Roger's mind, he's already cut the suspension in half and he intends to hold the line here to prove that he can be firm.
 

DJnVa

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Ferm Sheller said:
So, JM wrote deflate and deflator on two separate occasions in his texts to JJ and in completely different contexts (losing weight and letting the air out of a jacket). If that's true, that's some real buzzard luck. I must have a million texts on my phone and I bet I haven't used deflate or deflator once.
 
Well, clearly that means he did it then.
 

Stitch01

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86spike said:
Disagree

What the rebuttal math is saying is that it is possible that most of the balls were simply effected by weather and that Wells' math is not the absolute he claims it is due to several friendly assumptions which may not have been the case.

That is different from saying "nothing happened to the balls becuz SCIENCE".

I find this reasoning compelling as an argument that the Wells Report is flawed.

I do not find it compelling as absolute proof that nothing happened to the balls.

It casts serious doubt on Wells' conclusions and should be considered in the appeal.
Agreed. Saying the math and science proves nothing happened overstates the case. Should help get Brady on the field though.

Unfortunately there is zero way to ever prove nothing happened.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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riboflav said:
Disagree. There is literally nothing the NFL or RG have done since this stupid, made-up scandal broke that suggests that he will do anything other than deny Brady's appeal completely.
I'm guessing he will do much better than that. He will try to fix the issues that have been identified. He (Pash) will write an opinion explaining away the two gauge issue, etc., and upholding the suspension on some ground very hard to attack in arbitration.
 

Ferm Sheller

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Harry Hooper said:
 
 
Why are they different? They're both about losing weight, just apparent weight in the second instance.
OK, that could be. I thought he meant deflate the jacket, and didn't consider that he may have meant deflate himself (JJ).
 

Harry Hooper

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For whatever reason inside the NFL HQ/NYC bubble, it seems like a big thing for the NFL here was to NOT knock down the length of the suspension on the appeal. Freddie Coleman on ESPN last week as well as others have been sending along that the message coming from the NFL was the 4-game punishment is going to be the punishment.
 

DJnVa

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SemperFidelisSox said:
Yup. Even though the league is the villain in this story in many of our minds, you do have to give the bad guys credit sometimes. If this whole thing really was a set up from the very beginning, they executed it brilliantly.
 
It seems to me that if this was a setup, the evidence would be a hell of a lot more than a text where he used the word "deflate", they may have had the refs record some pregame data, and they probably wouldn't have let the objects of the setup out of their sight before the game.
 
Other than that though, they nailed it.
 

86spike

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Maybe the League isn't afraid of a court case because they firmly believe Jastremski and McNally are lying and want to get the under oath. They may have themselves convinced (rightly or wrongly) that they hold that as a trump card and Brady won't actually sue.

They really don't appear to be trying to avoid a suit.
 

Sportsbstn

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86spike said:
Maybe the League isn't afraid of a court case because they firmly believe Jastremski and McNally are lying and want to get the under oath. They may have themselves convinced (rightly or wrongly) that they hold that as a trump card and Brady won't actually sue.

They really don't appear to be trying to avoid a suit.
 
Perhaps, or they might just be mismanaging another debacle.
 

nighthob

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Ferm Sheller said:
So, JM wrote deflate and deflator on two separate occasions in his texts to JJ and in completely different contexts (losing weight and letting the air out of a jacket). If that's true, that's some real buzzard luck. I must have a million texts on my phone and I bet I haven't used deflate or deflator once.
 
I also bet you're not an NFL equipment guy. My biggest client is an electrical contracting company and I have more trade jokes than you can shake a stick at polluting my texts, 90% of which I'd wager make no appearance in your texts.
 

MuppetAsteriskTalk

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Any way that Brady can argue that as a prominent member of the NFLPA and a named plaintiff on the antitrust lawsuit there is no way Roger can be considered unbiased against him? 
 

riboflav

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86spike said:
Maybe the League isn't afraid of a court case because they firmly believe Jastremski and McNally are lying and want to get the under oath. They may have themselves convinced (rightly or wrongly) that they hold that as a trump card and Brady won't actually sue.

They really don't appear to be trying to avoid a suit.
 
This is what I was getting at. I now believe that RG thinks 100% that Brady is guilty. 
 

Leather

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If you believe (as I do) that the NFL is enjoying this off season spotlight, they might find the prospect of a lawsuit appealing regardless of the outcome.

It's the league with no offseason.
 

MarcSullivaFan

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DennyDoyle'sBoil said:
I think an equally likely scenario is that with people pointing out holes in the report, he simply cannot risk an arbitrator writing a scathing opinion undermining it. He would rather take his chances in court where the standard is higher. This is a bold power play and has pretty much blocked the one realistic avenue for Brady to make his point. An arbitrator ruling raching a conclusion opposite to Wells would have been devastating to Goodell. He has blocked that opportunity.
Agreed. And because there will not be a neutral the chances of the suspension ultimately holding up are very good.