Three, there is no reason why the first four games are any less important than any other four games.Ed Hillel said:
Four, the team would be better off if he misses fewer games.
#DFG: Canceling the Noise
- Thread starter nattysez
- Start date
Four, the team would be better off if he misses fewer games.
Yeah, anything less than four games is significantly better for the team, even if you attach some kind of negative value to the distraction of fighting (which exists regardless).AB in DC said:
Who is Bob Ryan even speaking for? Brady's teammates? His coaches? His fans? Who among these people want Brady to just take it on the chin?
He's speaking for himself, his ratings, his clicks, and his wallet. He's an infotainer. His goal is to entertain.Jed Zeppelin said:
This is an interesting read.. could there be dissension among the ranks?
http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20150808/SPORTS/150809364/13936/SPORTS
http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20150808/SPORTS/150809364/13936/SPORTS
Hard to say if there is actual dissension among the owners based on this column. Donaldson has been at the Providence Journal for decades and should have sources around the league. But he couches his words in this column in such a way that there is very little support for what looks to be his major point: that "a significant number of owners are “uncomfortable” with the way things are going."lithos2003 said:
Cnn is running the Dowd opinion piece...
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/07/opinions/dowd-nfl-brady-investigation/?iid=ob_homepage_featured_pool&iref=obnetwork
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/07/opinions/dowd-nfl-brady-investigation/?iid=ob_homepage_featured_pool&iref=obnetwork
Surprisingly even take from collingsworth and michaels during the hall of fame game. I don't remember the details but I was shocked that the NFL didn't order a verbal freight train to hit Brady during this broadcast.
Sorry if I missed cnn link, I'd seen the dowd discussion from his site but not it running on the front page of cnn. That was surprising to me to say the least...
Football tonight feels weird, didn't fully realize the cloud this has over the NFL until now. Knew how I felt but it's everyone's topic in sports right now, and that can't be good for the NFL...
Football tonight feels weird, didn't fully realize the cloud this has over the NFL until now. Knew how I felt but it's everyone's topic in sports right now, and that can't be good for the NFL...
I think the things you are citing matter. But they probably matter more in the macro than the micro.TheoShmeo said:
Brady's not a kid. He was doubted coming out of college, busted his ass, became a champ, developed amazing statistical success in the face of those who called him a game manager, won more championships, and is now in the running for being known a the greatest of all time.
If he's innocent, I think he's got too much pride and righteous indignation at this point to even consider knuckling under to a tyrant instead of defending his legacy so he can play in two or three more fall games. At least, I hope he does.
If missing four games is a slice of hell, I don't even want to imagine what reaching a deal with the man who called him a cheater is. I can't imagine someone as competitive as him taking a knee here and playing for overtime.
I've now moved into the flat-out NO camp.
I found this link on another message board. http://www.deflategatedeflated.com/
This guy is a retired scientist of some kind, has a theory that explains the one thing about this investigation that has never been answered. Why didn't the Patriots' exhibit any increase in pressure from the start to the finish of testing? We know that the balls should warm up once they enter the locker room. Everyone agrees that the Colts balls registered higher pressure because they had more time to warm up. So that should mean that Patriots ball 12 should have been warmer, and therefore of higher pressure, than ball 1. But that did not occur. In fact, both sides in the July appeal spent a lot of time on why Exponent's statistical analysis did not show any effect of timing on Patriots football pressure, when it was a big factor in the transient analysis. No one -- not Exponent, not the Princeton guy, not the NFLPA folks -- could explain why. This guy does.
Basically, the Exponent tests of football warming did not account for the footballs being transported in a ball bag that was just as cold and wet as the balls themselves. And the balls stayed in the bag until they were individually removed and tested. So while the ball bag may have warmed up significantly in the locker room, the balls inside did not.
Eliminate the effect of football warming and you eliminate any significant discrepancy between the actual pressures and what the Ideal Gas law would have predicted.
Right now it's just theory, without any experimental testing, but it's the best theory I've seen as to what Exponent's missed in their own experiments. It's clean, simple, and testable. And if confirmed, it completely destroys everything all of Wells's and Exponent's conclusions without bias, conspiracy, incompetence, or anything else.
I found this link on another message board. http://www.deflategatedeflated.com/
This guy is a retired scientist of some kind, has a theory that explains the one thing about this investigation that has never been answered. Why didn't the Patriots' exhibit any increase in pressure from the start to the finish of testing? We know that the balls should warm up once they enter the locker room. Everyone agrees that the Colts balls registered higher pressure because they had more time to warm up. So that should mean that Patriots ball 12 should have been warmer, and therefore of higher pressure, than ball 1. But that did not occur. In fact, both sides in the July appeal spent a lot of time on why Exponent's statistical analysis did not show any effect of timing on Patriots football pressure, when it was a big factor in the transient analysis. No one -- not Exponent, not the Princeton guy, not the NFLPA folks -- could explain why. This guy does.
Basically, the Exponent tests of football warming did not account for the footballs being transported in a ball bag that was just as cold and wet as the balls themselves. And the balls stayed in the bag until they were individually removed and tested. So while the ball bag may have warmed up significantly in the locker room, the balls inside did not.
Eliminate the effect of football warming and you eliminate any significant discrepancy between the actual pressures and what the Ideal Gas law would have predicted.
Right now it's just theory, without any experimental testing, but it's the best theory I've seen as to what Exponent's missed in their own experiments. It's clean, simple, and testable. And if confirmed, it completely destroys everything all of Wells's and Exponent's conclusions without bias, conspiracy, incompetence, or anything else.
This is interesting. How important, I don't know, but it intrigues me.( . ) ( . ) and (_!_) said:
Not the Michaels part. He is untouchable. He is still marvelously good after all these years, and he's reached the crazy uncle stage in which he doesn't give a fuck. Dude openly and regularly jokes about betting lines at crucial points in games, which is something they'd tolerate from no one else.
Collinsworth is different. He is reasonably good at what he does and has nothing approaching Michaels' longevity in the business. And he was not exactly in the Pats' corner on this around SB time; I thought he made way too big a deal about it during the SB broadcast.
There are degrees of slavish adherence; there is ESPN, and then there are the other partners.
Florio is in NBC's football house; so is Peter King. So maybe NBC doesn't give a damn and is willing to play this straight up.
AB in DC said:
Glad you've joined us. The science was straight up bull shit right from the git. More evidence, though - as much as we Dinthappeners welcome it - is but a sad exercise in futility.
I'm down as a No as well. TO me, there is still considerable doubt that there was any tampering. I'm sure the legal wrangling wouldn't permit it, but the hearing scheduled for this week should start with "Prove that the balls were tampered with".
Archer1979 said:
The next week or so of news will be about was Goodell allowed to do what he did and not about what Brady didn't do. The most infuriating part is that Brady's guilt was decided by power hungry morons who didn't understand that 11.7 was a predictable number. Is there a possibility that the balls were tampered with? Yes. Personally, though, I'd affix that possibility at the <1% that represents the Patriots haters that frequent these boards.
What was the NBC crew saying exactly? I never watch the HOF Game as I feel it's the worst of the worst when it comes to preseason football.
ipol said:
This kind of goes to Kraft's point that there are too many lawyers involved in this as this week's hearings. I'm gleaning this from the excellent discussion in the Legal thread, the hearing this week will probably center around procedure and not logic. The logical start for any investigation should be determining whether or not the law (or in this case, the rules) were broken. If the answer is yes, then it goes into who or how based on the evidence. If the answer is no, everyone packs up their briefs and gets on with their lives.
Since the NFL carried out the investigation, it kind of started in the middle and never really worked its way around to proving the first point.
I think it would indeed be extremely difficult for Brady to agree on a deal with Goodell given how Goodell has treated him until now.Myt1 said:
And I think it's likely that Brady's approach is "all in" as a result of his competitive nature and unwillingness to accept any hint of culpability here.
That said, competitive people settle with bitter adversaries and on terms that make them puke every day. The cliche that the best settlements are ones that both sides hate is, like most cliches, accurate.
In short, I don't think the fact that Goodell is despicable and Tom is ultra competitive wouldl prevent him from doing a deal that is on terms that are at the lowest range of acceptable to him. But that's admittedly pure speculation and it appears that the Sheriff isn't dealing.
Goodness...Peter King as a voice of reason in this mess. I guess RG has decided he doesn't need media air cover any more!
"how did we get from being at least generally aware of a scheme to deflate game balls to having “approved of, consented to,” and providing inducements to aid a scheme to deflate footballs?
If there’s more evidence beyond the Wells Report proving that Brady did what the league is claiming—and I don’t think there is—we need to hear that now."
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/08/09/andrew-luck-indianapolis-colts-nfl-frank-gifford-hard-knocks
"how did we get from being at least generally aware of a scheme to deflate game balls to having “approved of, consented to,” and providing inducements to aid a scheme to deflate footballs?
If there’s more evidence beyond the Wells Report proving that Brady did what the league is claiming—and I don’t think there is—we need to hear that now."
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/08/09/andrew-luck-indianapolis-colts-nfl-frank-gifford-hard-knocks
mwonow said:
I know it's been discussed and I've dug through our resident lawyers posts to determine why Brady can't in the end sue the league for defamation of character as it just seems each week another PR wave of misinformation is fired out to the public chipping away at his legacy. Was there a specific clause in the CBA or union documents that removes this right? Again I apologize if this has been detailed, I can't find it in here or the other threads and have only found a few posts referring to the difficulty of getting it to stick but with this newest flat out proclamation of guilt from the commissioner doesn't that line keep moving towards an easier burden of proof?
That's a good point. I believe most of the resident lawyers have said that the defamation bar for a public figure like Brady is so high that success is unlikely. But...with this latest, RG is on public record as starting that Brady cheated. As far as I know, there's absolutely no proof to support that. So it would seem (to me, anyway - IANAL) that by moving the goalposts in the #DG case to ground that is more supportive of the NFL's legal position, RG has also moved the dialog to ground that is more perilous for his own position re: defamation.Valek123 said:
In a bizarre way, this adds support for why owners might love RG. Willing to change his tune and put his own pasty ass a little further over the edge to help support his peculiar version of The Shield!
mwonow said:
Are those Peter King's words or Michael McCann's (SI's "legal analyst" who wrote the five or six paragraphs immediately preceding the quoted text above?) I think the part you quoted is actually King's writing following onto the McCann legal analysis, but it is kind of hard to tell. The cynic in me says PK wrote it that way so he can have plausible deniability if it makes waves at NFLHQ.
Cmon Peter. Stop tiptoeing around the bullshit whispers you're hearing from insiders and call it like you see it. Or do you think this evidence was left out of Wells, left out of the appeal, not quietly provided to Kraft and left out of all court fillings? No logical person believes there's some hidden secret except of course for people who want it to be true so bad that they abandon logic (looking at you NFL "insiders").mwonow said:
I've wondered for a while now if league insiders have some terrible game of telephone going where they all think they're giving each other some inside scoop about the truth but really they're full of shit and standing on the sidelines while a team gets railroaded. Why else would PK be floating this BS unless he's been hearing whispers? Or is RG just too far beyond reproach in his mind to have done all this with the evidence we have and what has been presented internally under seal.
I think the idea is that some RG has said Brady cheated, Brady would need to prove that RG didn't really believe that Brady had cheated in order to show defamation.mwonow said:
I think the NFL is being very careful about what it says publically in order to avoid possible liability.
This is likely for the King thread but Pete should be now where Wetzel and Jenkins were all along. He' s been slowly walking up to outrage but it's been clear since Monday night after the AFCCG that his has been a travesty about nothing and at a huge cost to its showcase player and franchise. Just say it out loud, Pete, this whole process has been a ridiculous exercise in abuse of power and mismanaged priorities.
Theo, I may have missed something, but is there hard evidence that the NFL intended to investigate the ball until that fateful interception and the complaint lodge to league officials during the first half of the AFCCG? Do we know that this was a setup or are we just connecting the dots on a "more probable than not" basis?
Koufax said:
This is a fantastic question - would the balls have ever been tested if there was no pick?
Valek123 said:
IANAL, but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in the past ...
There were multiple reasons that Brady was not going to be able to sue for defamation before, but most centered on the fact that proving actual malice is virtually impossible. That changed (IMO) with the release of the transcript from the appeals hearing.
There are a few examples of what I'm talking about but here's the big one for me. In his decision denying Brady's appeal, Goodell wrote that Brady's communications with Jastremski "addressed only the preparation of footballs for the Super Bowl rather than the tampering allegations..." Goodell's intent here is obvious - he wants the public to draw an adverse conclusion, which is that Brady's claim of innocence is not credible. Indeed, this is why Goodell moved from characterizing Brady's actions as being "generally aware" of ball tampering to being, essentially, the mastermind behind the entire scheme.
The problem here is that with the release of the actual transcripts, we know that Goodell is lying. Because Brady did not deny speaking with Jastremski about the ball tampering allegations. Yet Goodell lied and clearly did so to harm Brady, which is the very definition of malice.
This doesn't mean the case won't be very difficult, but I now think that if Brady were so inclined, he could bring an action that has the possibility of surviving an initial motion to dismiss.
Average Reds said:
Could the NFL argue that the intent wasn't to harm Brady, but rather to give their case a better chance of winning in court? Would that work (even though it would look bad)?
Edit: although if it gave them a better chance of winning in court, that would of course hurt Brady with regard to being suspended, so maybe it doesn't matter?
tims4wins said:
My non-lawyer answer is that you answered your own question. By definition the lie defames Brady,
Can an arbitrator's award (the role Goddell was playing) be the basis for a defamation lawsuit? Typically, what you say in a legal proceeding is protected from defamation (within some limits that we don't really need to get into).
(I do find the defamation discussion to be wildly off the mark. Real defamation lawsuits are very few and far between, especially for a public figure.)
(I do find the defamation discussion to be wildly off the mark. Real defamation lawsuits are very few and far between, especially for a public figure.)
Kraft's point is incoherent. Once the arbitration railroading started, it was bound to end up in court and the reason the procedure was so butchered in the first place was because of the process he and his fellow owners pushed so their proxy could maintain absolute power.
This is the mess it is because of the lack of legal procedural safeguards, not because of them. And it's exactly the system Kraft wanted.
This is the mess it is because of the lack of legal procedural safeguards, not because of them. And it's exactly the system Kraft wanted.
Pretty sure Brady isn't bringing a defamation claim, as the burden is incredibly high, and even if he can clear it, to what end? Sue for money damages? He wins or loses in court (including potential appeals), and then everyone hopefully moves on.Joshv02 said:
Here's the thing.AB in DC said:
We don't even know if the way the PSI's are listed in tables is the order they were tested in.
I can't remember where, but I have a recollection of reading somewhere that the numbers that Wells listed out were a transcription of the original notes.
The only people that know for sure is the same group that said "Tom Brady said him and JJ never talked about anything than the Super Bowl."
Which is why it's fairly significant that Wells & NFL claimed privilege over a lot of their interview notes and documents.
tims4wins said:
Horrible course of action. Any claim for reputational damage drags in all kind of scurrilous assertions that negatively bear on reputation, at least for purposes of damages.
I can't imagine how upset and furious Kraft is. Not only has Goodell said Brady is a liar and lied under oath; he is also saying he doesn't believe Kraft and that his fifteen year history with Brady and the statement of his character he gave for the appeal means nothing.
Joshv02 said:
I think Brady would be a fool to bring the action and am convinced that he won't. My point was that until now, the argument itself was frivolous and I no longer believe that.
Character statements are useless, and Kraft shouldn't be pissed about not crediting his statement, as Goodell has made it clear that there is more going on here than Brady's guilt or innocence (i.e. this is now a turf war between the NFL and NFLPA, pure and simple). What Kraft should be pissed about is that he was played, if you believe Kraft's statement about expectation of leniency after the Patriots agreed not to fight the team penalties. Of course, I don't believe Kraft's statement, so i don't credit that either. The real fury should be at how the Patriots and Brady are being absolutely railroaded. No extraneous reasons for their anger are necessary.Gambler7 said:
I'm not quite sure what this means. What I'm saying is that, because of those things, I doubt that accepting a suspension for any games is within the range that is acceptable to him. It feels like you're drawing a line between the two somewhere in my reasoning that isn't there. That he'd be willing to accept a deal from a different commissioner that hadn't caused him a cheat or something.TheoShmeo said:
Can Brady make an argument, and more importantly is it worth making an argument in front of Berman saying that accepting any punishment is unacceptable, for whatever reason? (legacy, guilt, awareness, vindication, etc.)
That's not an argument, that's a statement. Given the judge's admonition that both sides seek to settle, it would behoove Brady to at least offer to accept a fine for non-cooperation and 0 games suspension in exchange for a settlement. He can certainly tell the judge he's not willing to go further; and the judge can tell Brady that he (the judge) is inclined to inform Brady that his case before him is a tenuous one which could result in an affirmation of the arbitration award.natpastime162 said:
The fact that the NFL is even close to giving enough ammo for a public figure to potentially have a chance at getting a defamation suit through the courthouse doors shows you how crazy this whole process has been.
For whatever reason, the NFL keeps pushing the boundaries on their pronouncements in regards to Brady. The most clear cut example being the arbitration reward as noted.
Still Brady has almost no shot at it (which goes to show how screwed up the standard for defamation has gotten for public figures that it is nearly impossible to win one).
For whatever reason, the NFL keeps pushing the boundaries on their pronouncements in regards to Brady. The most clear cut example being the arbitration reward as noted.
Still Brady has almost no shot at it (which goes to show how screwed up the standard for defamation has gotten for public figures that it is nearly impossible to win one).
Bleedred said:
CBAs sound more absurd every time one of the SOSH lawyers chimes in. The NFL created a proxy war out of deflated footballs and Brady's career is collateral damage.
Nat, sure. I don't think anyone would reasonably doubt dc's point above that the NFL is the party with negotiating flexibility here. He'd just do well to be careful about how that's conveyed and if he is, it could even be a positive.
That all sounds great, but the problem is that the balls were measured before the game (or approved, or whatever) and found to be fine. The NFL didn't "let the Pats play with illegal footballs" during the whole first half. (Put aside whether or not there was anything illegal with the balls.) The allegation is that after they were approved, they were deflated. And there's no evidence that the league knew that they were deflated after the pre-game approval and before the INT/halftime.
So the fact that nothing was done in the first half isn't evidence that the league doesn't care about the integrity of the game. According to the league's line, they acted as soon as there was an allegation that the balls being used were not to spec.
So the fact that nothing was done in the first half isn't evidence that the league doesn't care about the integrity of the game. According to the league's line, they acted as soon as there was an allegation that the balls being used were not to spec.
Bleedred said:
ok, that makes sense. Thanks doing the math on the judge suggesting the parties settle, as the question was meant to be framed in that context.