Sorry to hear about your loss, saintfan. 
Thank you all . . . it’s been a tough week. The service was last week and her husband asked me to do the eulogy. It went really well and people wanted copies. I’ve done a number of them and I hate to say it but it seems to be a special talent. I guess we all have to be good at something. The sanctuary was full. It was a really nice service as funeral masses go. Tragic, though, and unexpected. But day after tomorrow I go to the ocean for 6 days which should be restorative.
The thought of Brady feeding his phone into the Bass-O-Matic did give me a little boost though
I don’t actually care about this but the media here does so I have a sort of opinion:
- Goodell keeps stretching his authority. Nothing in the CBA allows him to suspend for a degree of cooperation. Brady cooperated: met an entire day with investigators and then spent an entire day with Goodell. I haven't read Goodell's statement so my information is incomplete.
- I keep hearing about texts but they already have every text that Brady sent to the only people potentially implicated in this thing. The Wells report cleared the Patriots staff, including the equipment manager, the coaching staff and ownership. So why do they need Brady's phone when they have the two other guy's phones? (There's a side issue: if this were a subpoena matter, they could obtain phone records from the carrier.) Third, Brady has what I think would be a reasonable two-pronged defense other than that they already have his call records to the other guys: his texts and call lists are highly personal information that involve celebrities AND information was continuously leaked so there was no guarantee of confidentiality about this information. I've heard they told Brady he could deliver only those involving these guys ... but that makes little sense to me because they already have all that material.
- The CBA's disciplinary content relies on findings of guilt and innocence. If I were a judge, my first question would be whether there's sufficient evidence that Brady did anything bad. The best the Wells report could do was say "more probable than not" but a number of analyses since then have cast a lot of doubt on that - and not just the AEI one because a bunch of physicists who work with gases have said the report is wrong. It's difficult for a "judicial process" - and the CBA contemplates one in the sense of a hearing and resolution based on evidence - to say "you're guilty" for not cooperating enough when there's insufficient evidence to find you're guilty. The only hidden bit is whether the missing part would rationally or reasonably be enough to tilt the scales in favor of guilt, but I've never heard of a judicial case where that is presumed absent anything else.
Anyway, as I’ve said, it doesn’t matter to me. They won last year so the odds of them winning again or even making the Super Bowl were very low. As I’ve noted, it was only by multiple flukes that Seattle made it back and that NE made it too. Flukes often happen and the odds they break in your favor year after year are very low. And NE is completely redoing its secondary and, frankly, no one knows who will play at least one of those positions. Brady clearly cares about his integrity and his legacy but people who hate NE, who hate Belichick and who hate Brady won’t change their minds. I was being driven in a car a few years back by a guy who started to gloat about how the Patriots lost to the Giants and went 18-1 and my comment was: your team has never won anything.
Tom Brady’s statement. If true, it makes Goodell look ridiculous.
"I am very disappointed by the NFL’s decision to uphold the 4 game suspension against me. I did nothing wrong, and no one in the Patriots organization did either.
"Despite submitting to hours of testimony over the past 6 months, it is disappointing that the Commissioner upheld my suspension based upon a standard that it was ‘probable’ that I was ‘generally aware’ of misconduct. The fact is that neither I, nor any equipment person, did anything of which we have been accused. He dismissed my hours of testimony and it is disappointing that he found it unreliable.
"I also disagree with yesterday’s narrative surrounding my cellphone. I replaced my broken Samsung phone with a new iPhone 6 AFTER my attorneys made it clear to the NFL that my actual phone device would not be subjected to investigation under ANY circumstances. As a member of a union, I was under no obligation to set a new precedent going forward, nor was I made aware at any time during Mr. Wells investigation, that failing to subject my cell phone to investigation would result in ANY discipline.
"Most importantly, I have never written, texted, emailed to anybody at anytime, anything related to football air pressure before this issue was raised at the AFC Championship game in January. To suggest that I destroyed a phone to avoid giving the NFL information it requested is completely wrong.
"To try and reconcile the record and fully cooperate with the investigation after I was disciplined in May, we turned over detailed pages of cell phone records and all of the emails that Mr. Wells requested. We even contacted the phone company to see if there was any possible way we could retrieve any/all of the actual text messages from my old phone. In short, we exhausted every possibility to give the NFL everything we could and offered to go thru the identity for every text and phone call during the relevant time. Regardless, the NFL knows that Mr. Wells already had ALL relevant communications with Patriots personnel that either Mr. Wells saw or that I was questioned about in my appeal hearing. There is no ‘smoking gun’ and this controversy is manufactured to distract from the fact they have zero evidence of wrongdoing.
"I authorized the NFLPA to make a settlement offer to the NFL so that we could avoid going to court and put this inconsequential issue behind us as we move forward into this season. The discipline was upheld without any counter offer. I respect the Commissioner’s authority, but he also has to respect the CBA and my rights as a private citizen. I will not allow my unfair discipline to become a precedent for other NFL players without a fight.
“Lastly, I am overwhelmed and humbled by the support of family, friends and our fans who have supported me since the false accusations were made after the AFC Championship game. I look forward to the opportunity to resume playing with my teammates and winning more games for the New England Patriots.”
This it to me is more startling: Robert Kraft comes out against Goodell after Kraft has fallen on his sword for the NFL.
He’s pretty blunt.
“I was wrong to put my faith in the league,” Kraft said during a five-minute prepared statement.
Kraft, who read from several sheets of paper, apologized to the fans for dropping the fight against the NFL in May. He admitted he was wrong to go that route.
“I was willing to accept the harshest penalty in the history of the NFL for an alleged ball violation because I believed it would exonerate Tom Brady,” Kraft said.
Kraft clearly went on the assault against Goodell.
“The decision handed down by the league yesterday is unfathomable to me,” Kraft said. "Six months removed from the AFC Championship Game, the league still has no hard evidence.
“I continue to believe in and unequivocably support Tom Brady.”
Kraft later added, “I’ve come to the conclusion this was never about doing what was fair and just.”
I think that the penalty doesn’t fit the crime, but I think what Goodell imposed the penalty for was non cooperation by Brady, he can talk all he wants about being a celebrity, having celebrities on speed dial, but the reason Goodell threw the book at him was for non cooperation, I think he was trying to make an example of Brady. In terms of whether the CBA allows the commissioner to do this, that comes down to a matter of contract law. Obviously, the Pats and NFLPA are going to take this to court and try and get an injunction, but that would put the Pats in a difficult position. It would be much better to lose Brady for 4 games to start the season, then get an injunction, then potentially have him suspended in like week 10 or something. I also think they are going to have tough sledding in court, courts are very, very reluctant to get involved in disputes like this, that involve an entity like the NFL. Unless there is something clear and specific in the CBA that would preclude what Goodell did, they were not going to interfere in what a private association like the NFL does.
More importantly, it is going to be hard to get the other owners to go along with getting rid of Goodell. First of all, the other teams hate NE, so they won’t mind seeing Brady and Craft get the shaft. More importantly, though, in the last 5 years the amount of money split between all the teams has grown from 3 billion to 7 billion dollars, and that isn’t chump change, and most give credit to Goodell for that. As they say, money talks and dung walks.
Fans in Baltimore, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, etc. who are ecstatic over Brady’s punishment will be singing a different tune when megalomaniacal Goodell comes after their guy for something minor, like football pressure.
There is a joke going around, that if Brady had broken his phone on Gisele’s head, the suspension would only be 2 games.
I really think any time somebody brings up Brady disposing of the cell phone, they should also mention Goodell destroying the Spygate tapes.
If Kraft really believes that nothing happened then why are the two ball guys on indefinite suspension?
Yet one more example of the cover-up being worse than the crime?
@jshain:
That is my take on it, that this isn’t about deflategate, but rather about the cover up, or perceived coverup. My guess is Goodell wants to use Brady as an example, and is also using this to test his power if another incident like this comes up, where players know that if they don’t cooperate, that they can be hit hard. I am not saying that is right or wrong, or whether the CBA covers it, just that is what I think the motive is. Put it this way, tampering with equipment routinely involved fines, I dimly recall 50k, and at most something like this should merit at most a game suspension (assuming there is real reason to believe Brady was involved, which even as a Jets fan, I am not so certain).
What interests me is that something is going on. My guess is that Goodell:
- Is responding to having been so obviously, incompetently wrong on key issues that don't deal with football games, meaning abuse cases. He's not only been wrong but he's reached beyond his powers as commissioner and been slapped down.
- So he's trying to assert his authority in a football matter. Both to preserve his position and the commissioner's role. It's a huge reach: asserting there's a suspension for phone replaced (is destroyed the right word?) when that wasn't even part of the original matter is, to me, a way to cloak an assertion of power in football matters. If you actually think about it, the phone isn't even important: cell phone records aren't destroyed when the phone is replaced because they rest with your carrier and Brady says he turned over pages of requested material (which leaks said he refused to do).
- I assume much of the reasoning behind this is the utter incompetence of the NFL in running basic game security issues. NFL employees were caught selling the kicking balls (blamed at first by the media on the Patriots). They don't use tested or even standard gauges, don't label or track balls, don't write anything down, don't ... so they've been in catch-up mode ever since.
- Goodell rested his authority on a very expensive "investigation" that turns out to have been iffy at best. He has two choices: say it was botched or stay the course. The best he could do was come up with this cell phone ploy.
- I doubt Goodell thought Kraft would come out with what was basically a declaration of war. This could be far more important for the future of the NFL and the commissioner than anything else in this. Kraft's concerns could change the way the owners control the commissioner's office. They should.
BTW, anyone involved in this thing is going to be eliminated. That’s the way these things work: the part-time employees investigated are collateral damage. Anyone who thinks that’s somehow proof of anything is either being purposefully partisan or can’t think logically.
Another upstanding member of the NFL.
Drag racing at speeds up to 143 mph with a 12-year old in the car? OMG, what an idiot. He’s really, really lucky that child wasn’t injured. Hope Richardson enjoyed the ride, because he’ll riding the bench for a while.
- Brady is told by Ted Wells he does not want or need his phone. His agent Yee asks again to be sure and Wells repeats not wanting or needing the phone. Yet, the appeal is upheld on the basis of destroying the un-needed phone.
- Ted Wells described Brady as being totally cooperative. Yet appeal is upheld on the basis of lack of cooperation.
- Ted Wells is called an independent investigator. Goodell won't hand over communications with Wells, citing attorney-client confidentiality. Is Ted Wells independent, or is he Goodell's lawyer?
- Brady is denied the ability to question a high-ranking NFL official--Goodell says he had nothing to do with the case. It turns out the guy helped Wells, to the point of editing some testimony in the report.
Can’t make this up.
Thank that the camps have opened, and there is football again:
[Brady’s amazing, stupendous, OBJ-like one-handed catch and run](NFL National Football League News, Expert Analysis, Rumors, Live Updates, & more - Yahoo Sports)
My phone, a Samsung 3 so not as up to date as the one Tommy destroyed, records the texts I send and receive. Wouldn’t his cell phone carrier record these? They had the phone messages from the two ‘ball’ employees who have been fired. These texts are not gone forever and the phone carrier can just pull them up. Ask Hillary Clinton, they pulled up years worth of hers when they needed them.
The NFL is looking bad here.
Jerome Brown redux…almost. And fortunately, but no thanks to Richardson.
Richardson clocked going fast? Surely not carrying a football.