Harry Hooper said:
Solved for less than $2+ million. It sure reads like a joke about JJ looking fat/pumped up in that jacket.
Sounds good, but why didn't the rebuttal use this? Presumably, they talked to Jastremski & McNally and just asked them what was meant.Ed Hillel said:Looks like we have an answer to the deflate that jacket text:
http://www.patspulpit.com/2015/5/14/8609329/what-is-this-deflate-that-you-speak-of
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.
Rice was not a petition to vacate. Goodell appointed a former judge to hear Rice's appeal.LuckyBen said:Why did it work for Rice and Peterson?
riboflav said:Is RG calling TB's bluff here? Why would Goodell do this if he thinks TB will sue?
Ferm Sheller said:Jastremski looked "overinflated" on the sidelines and JM told him to deflate? Huh?
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.
Disagreekartvelo said:However, nothing happened to the balls.
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.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?
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.
Ferm Sheller said:Jastremski looked "overinflated" on the sidelines and JM told him to deflate? Huh?
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 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.
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.
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.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."
That's the ballgame, though.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.
They kicked the bear in the balls and published naked pictures of its wife.SemperFidelisSox said:They poked the bear with the rebuttal today.
soxhop411 said:This is about to get ugly.
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.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.
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.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."
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?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 ...
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.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.
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.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."
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed. Saying the math and science proves nothing happened overstates the case. Should help get Brady on the field though.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.
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.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.
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 said:
Why are they different? They're both about losing weight, just apparent weight in the second instance.
No, they think the Patriots and Brady should admit that they're cheaters and take their medicine.Hoya81 said:Even the most ardent Pats haters will question Goodell doing the hearing.
I wasn't being sarcastic (I'm a Pats fan). I literally meant it was awfully unfortunateDrewDawg said:
Well, clearly that means he did it then.
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.
riboflav said:Is RG calling TB's bluff here? Why would Goodell do this if he thinks TB will sue?
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.
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.
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.
Agreed. And because there will not be a neutral the chances of the suspension ultimately holding up are very good.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.