I just did a quick look-up of SpyGate and read the first few sentences on Wikipedia. Right up front, that is the depth of my knowledge on the topic. Also, I know nothing about the rules currently in place. Do you think if the first time something like this happened were now a team would have gotten in trouble? Cameras are so prevalent and invasive everywhere these days that if your third toe on your left foot moves a smidgen, it’s probably been snapped somewhere by someone.
I happen to think that Robert Kraft is correct on all points.
I too, was surprised by Kraft’s statement. His reputation is that of a gentleman; a businessman with a very fine and affable character whom just have happened to purchase a football team. The statement he made sounds like a whiny tirade and a denial full of holes from a PR flack.
This assertion has been stated by several of you. Hopefully, that will be answered by Colt’s QB Andrew Luck and equipment people as part of the investigation.
I’m a CA resident and Niners fan. Before deflategate surfaced, I was rooting for the Patriots against the Seahawks. Love Kraft and what he accomplished as an owner. My D graduated from Boston College in 2012 and Boston was my 2nd favorite city to my hometown of the S.F. bay area. I’m not a Pete Carroll fan, since his USC days and the Reggie Bush scandal, and subsequent departure out the backdoor in a very timely fashion. Now, however, I’m hoping “justice is served” and that the Seahawks win the game.
I believe it was Mark Brunnell, during an initial statement that said it best: “The football is our livelihood”. Most anyone who has ever played a sport involving an inflatable ball, at any level, has an awareness of ball air pressure.
There was no rule against taping the other teams signals. How could there be? There are 60,000 people in the stands watching, with cameras and phones taking pictures. Every team in the NFL routinely taped the other team’s signals. Every team knew that. That’s why every team changed their signals from game to game, quarter to quarter.
The only rule was that you couldn’t tape signal from the same video booths that the teams used to video the game for the all-22 coaches film of the game. For that infraction, the Patriots were docked a first round draft choice and Belichick was fined half a million dollars.
He’s not going to take it up the you know what from Roger Goodell again.
Belichick and Kraft, as team executives, have signed agreements not to sue the NFL. As a union player, there is no such restriction on Tom Brady. I suspect that this is why the NFL has not interviewed Tom Brady, despite spending three days in Foxboro last week. I do not think that the NFL has heard the last from Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen on the issue of dragging the TB12 brand through the mud. Brady is one of the most respected players in the history of the NFL.
Kraft has been one of Goodell’s biggest proponents and supporters… if he turns against Goodell, maybe we will be seeing a new commissioner.
He’s #12? Is he allowed to root for the other team? 
Nobody in New England thought beating the Colts would be tougher than the Ravens. Just the opposite. The Ravens always play the Pats tough and beat them half the time. It’s just a bad matchup for the Patriots. The Ravens are good that the things that give the Pats trouble.
The Colts are just the opposite. The Pats are a horrible matchup for them. The last four games, Pats vs Colts, in the Luck era:
45-7
42-20
43-22
59-24
The only reason the Pats scoring has been lower is that they have been consistently running the ball against the Colts rather than throwing and running up the score, mostly because the Colts have a putrid run defense and can’t stop it.
I shudder to think what the score will be when they meet again next year. Let’s just say that I don’t think the Pats will be taking any kneel downs at the end of the game…
NRE, the corollary is that since Kraft is one of Goodell’s biggest supporters, Goodell is less likely to go against Kraft.
I fail to see how there was an injustice in the first place! As far as “justice” being served, it would have worked a lot better if the Pats ended up winning the game against the Seahawks on a FG with a “tampered” football. Now, THAT would have been poetic justice for a team that forced the NFL to implement rules that preclude messing with the kicker’s footballs.
That deflategate is just a bunch of sliced baloney. Or perhaps chicharrones.
Didn’t exactly work out that way in 2007, to the tune of a first round draft pick and $750,000.
And in fact, none other than Mr. Tom Brady is on record as preferring an underinflated football. His assertions last week that he can’t really tell much about ball pressure are not credible.
@notrichenough , Kraft may be a good guy, but it’s also true that he and Goodell are pretty cozy.
In fact,
And let’s not forget:
[Patriots owner Robert Kraft behind NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s $300 million salary: report](Patriots owner Robert Kraft behind NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s $300 million salary: report – New York Daily News)
So whatever else can be said about Mr. Kraft, it cannot be said that he has an arms-length relationship with the Commissioner, or an unbiased view of him.
You don’t have to read tea leaves. Bill Belichick said Saturday that the New England Patriots asked the referee to inflate their game balls to the low end of the range, 12.5 PSI, when they delivered them pre-game.
I love how people imagine Tom Brady having a lot of time to ponder the feel of the ball. Think about what happens on an NFL play. He only touches it for a few seconds on each play, and those few seconds are terror-filled. He either throws it or gets hammered. The last thing he’s thinking about is the football.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQGDoHxV2CQ
Now, what’s surprising is that the officials don’t notice inflation. The NFL rulebook gives the referee the sole responsibility to determining whether or not the ball is suitable for play on each snap.
Belichick said they did a blind test with their QBs last week. None of the QBs could tell a 1 psi difference. They guess right some of the time on a 2 psi difference. But, hey, like Belichick says, don’t take his word for it. Anyone can test it themselves.
We are talking miniscule differences as anyone who has tried to inflate tires to an exact pressure with a digital guage knows. I use an electric compressor with an auto shutoff to pump my car tires. Even so, when I test them afterwards with a digital gauge, they differ by 1 psi.
I have a different take on the whole thing. I think that after beating them like rented mules for fifteen years, Belichick and the New England Patriots are completely in the heads of most of their opponents. I see at as a sign of psychological domination. Keep in mind that the vast majority of ex-jock talking heads on sports networks have been beaten in championship games by the New England Patriots at one time or another. They must be cheating…
It was the night before the AFC Championship. Kraft throws an annual playoff party at his house for the entire team. This episode of the Pats’ weekly TV show was broadcast live from the fairly lavish party:
Spygate was they taped from an unapproved location after the NFL sent out a memo saying “don’t tape from these locations”. That’s all. It wasn’t that they taped but where they taped from. Period. 99% of what you hear about it is wrong and is being pushed by people who either have an axe to grind - i.e., Marshall Faulk still wants to believe the Rams won in 2002 and Heinz Ward still can’t believe the Patriots came into Pittsburgh and won - or who are looking for exposure on TV and radio. Belichick was fined and the team lost a draft pick not because they taped but because they disobeyed the memo from the NFL about where they could tape from. That’s it. Everything else is phony bull.
There is no evidence of any other rule infractions. Period.
As I’ve noted, people allege stuff, some of it without any possibility of it being right, like the claim the Patriots used deflated footballs in kicking against the Ravens. (The NFL completely controls kicking balls, never lets the teams have them.) Or that the Patriots turned off the radios for play calling. (The NFL controls the radios.) Or that the Patriots radioed Tom Brady the defensive signals back when spygate came out, like they could somehow figure out the signals during halftime off a tape and then use that in the 2nd half. It takes a fool to imagine it’s possible to do that, to look at all the plays in the 1st half and figure out which of multiple guys is giving the actual signal - assuming that doesn’t change from series to series - and how that matches up to actual defensive calls, which aren’t the same as defensive alignment because teams disguise their intentions. But the real problem is the NFL cuts off the radios with 15 seconds on the game clock, meaning that on most plays the offensive coach has 25 seconds to talk at the QB on a normal play. The NFL has an official seated where they keep the game clock and he turns off the radios. People tried to invent ways the Patriots could get around the NFL’s control, all involving monkeying with the equipment, but the NFL does random game day inspections and no team has ever been found to be doing this. (There have been vague claims but all involve unnamed people who supposedly were then out of the league and none ever about the Patriots.) The play has been called when a team breaks the huddle - you can see the QB usually looking at the sidelines before going into the huddle, often because hand signals and the like may also be used - and the offense only sees the defensive alignment, which may be disguised, when they come up to scrimmage. The QB has 15 seconds to change the call, set the protection, etc. So it’s not a rational allegation but you can find that crap all over the place. (BTW, when the QB yells and points “56 is the Mike” or something similar, that is a shorthand way of telling the linemen how to set their blocks, meaning this is the guy you center on, whether he’s the actual middle linebacker (the Mike) or not. Centering means there’s a blocking scheme and it now is centered relative to this guy on the field.)
The radio allegation, btw, is often hilarious; I read recently that Bill Parcells complained the 49ers would turn off the radio when Bill Walsh coached but he retired in 1988 and radios came in for the 1994 season. Parcells may have complained about the 49ers but to link that to Walsh is bad reporting.
BTW, Brady is not on record saying he likes an under-inflated ball. I’ve heard him say explicitly he likes it at 12.5 psi, the lower bound of the allowed pressure.
That is an example of the silly reporting. Did you know Brady was the guy who made the NFL allow teams to prepare their own balls? Well, not really; he was one of all the QB’s in the league and their teams who wanted to do this but it doesn’t make a good story to say “all the QB’s and their teams wanted to use balls they were comfortable with”. Sells better to say Brady made the rule change. He is a QB so therefore it’s not strictly a lie to say it.
Former head of NFL officiating Mike Pereira (man I wish they would pass a law banning referees from talking, but that’s another story) was on the Rich Eisen Show yesterday. He said the whole inflation rule was antiquated, a relic of the days when both QBs played with the same ball. Now that both QBs use their own balls, there’s no point in even having the rule. If a QB wants to play with a 10 PSI ball, let him. The other QB can play with whatever he wants. Pereira suggested that the NFL will look at simply eliminating the rule as part of the fallout of this mess.
And from the depressing news file. Oh lord. NBC is televising the SuperBowl, which means that we have to listen to Bob Costas talk about balls.
Ooh, I just realized Bathroomgate is about the ballboy who carries both teams bags of balls out to the field. That’s a huge revelation. Maybe he inflated the Colts balls! Maybe he sprayed them with non-stick spray so the Colts couldn’t hold on. From Jerry Thornton of Bleacherreport.com:
"But this report asks more questions than it answers. What WAS he doing in that bathroom? Was he going Number Two? Because that seems unlikely. Unless it was one of those perfect, double-tapered ones that George Brett talked about, and that to me seems pretty far fetched. So he must have just peed, in which case we have to ask what else went on in there? Did he lift the seat or was it already up? Did he flush? How many times did he shake it after? And what’s up with the 90 seconds? I suppose he could squeeze one out in that much time. But even if he only had to take a little leak, that still doesn’t leave much time to wash his hands. And if he didn’t wash them, I think the NFL needs to know why.
I mean, think about what a pair of unwashed pee hands could do to a football. They could change the feel, the tackiness, the air pressure. And if the Patriots had an attendant handling the balls with pee hands, what about the Colts? Isn’t it a competitive disadvantage when one team has bodily fluids on the ball and the other doesn’t?
Oh, and what did Belichick know about this guy’s potty break? You can’t sit there and tell me he’s the smartest, most prepared coach in the NFL and tell me he’s not up on the bathroom habits of his locker room attendants. He claims he tested the football’s bladder. What about this kid’s bladder?"
All wrapped up with media day and hanging out at the pool now! The weather here is perfect!
A nude beach, I see, saintfan. Very daring.