#DFG: Canceling the Noise
- Thread starter nattysez
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djbayko said:
Her resume is pretty impressive, actually. Junior faculty at Yale, technical work with Lucent and Bell Labs. Sounds like she made her own gig after being denied tenure.
I would say, with regards to #deflategate, Sayre's law applies bigtime.
Maybe the tide is indeed turning.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/13890385/for-roger-goodell-roger-deflategate
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/13890385/for-roger-goodell-roger-deflategate
Chris Mortenson's incorrect report. That neither he nor the NFL corrected as it festered for months.djbayko said:
But, please remember, Mort is a victim here.
The experiment will be done over and over again as the weather gets cold. Can the local network affiliates create agreements with the Pats opponents' network affiliates to record the experiments? To be shown by both on the Sunday evening news?
If it makes you feel any better, Mort looks like a shell of a man sitting next to Schefter these days. Other than maybe RG himself, I'm not sure anyone's professional reputation in this whole ordeal has taken a bigger hit than Mort's. Deservedly so perhaps, but he will never again command the respect as a football reporting pioneer that Schefter and others spoke of during all this – entirely because he got a single story wrong and, more likely than not, was forbidden by his employer from correcting it.twothousandone said:
I'm as pissed as any Pats fan about that tweet but that kind of sucks.
You may be right that ESPN forbade him from correcting it.Van Everyman said:
But even if they did that, I still blame Mort for not doing more and not eventually owning the mistake, and doing so fully.
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone could be duped. Mort had a stellar reputation. Part of what defines us is how we react to difficult situations. I blame Mort for not reacting better and not forcing the issue with ESPN, if it came to that. And I think it is also possible that he never really came clean was out of ego, not that I know that and not that I don't agree that ESPN is a more likely explanation.
(That he -- alone among the ESPN "experts" -- picked the Packers to lose at home to the Rams last week is a further indication that he is losing it!)
You really have to torture logic to come to the conclusion that ESPN stopped Mort from correcting his initial report.Van Everyman said:
The most obvious conclusion is also the simplest explanation: Mort - like many in the news media - believed the story. He stood by it, and when it was corrected months later he continued to insist (as he does, lamely, even today) that the essence of the story is true, even if some of the particulars were incorrect. To an almost uncanny degree, Mort's position is precisely the position taken by the NFL. and while I know that no one believes it is a coincidence, I'm astonished that people are blaming ESPN for it.
If ESPN was behind Mort's refusal to correct his report, why are they allowing other ESPN reporters and personalities to attack the substance of the report? Logic dictates that the answer is that ESPN did not prohibit Mort from correcting his report. Mort has concluded - for whatever reason - that he cannot do so.
Maybe he can't bring himself to burn a source. Maybe he is actually more involved in the creation of the actual report than he has let on and cannot risk exposure. Maybe he's just a hack more concerned with access than accuracy. Or maybe he simply believes, or believes he knows, but cannot prove, that the Pats are a dishonest organization and so is unwilling to back off. Whatever the case, the fact that Schefter and others at ESPN have openly discredited his reporting is all the proof I need to conclude that this is 100% on Mort.
He has torched his own reputation and I have no sympathy.
Has anyone at ESPN other than Schefter attacked the report until more recently? My sense was that ESPN was completely AWOL on the Mort/PSI issue – most likely because their biggest business partner asked them to be. It's not like this would be the first time the NFL asked ESPN to do something and the network complied.
BTW I'm not really defending Mort here – he got a report wrong and when you live by a source you die by a source. Even more to the point, when you make a living off of sidling up to a powerful institution, you have to understand the risk that you may outgrow your usefulness to said institution someday. To that end, I've found Mort's comments since he tried to straighten things out about Twitter and the like to be as pathetic as anyone here.
That said, I just don't see any evidence that ESPN wasn't in some respect behind Mort standing behind this report up as long as he did. That he weakly defended it well after the fact seems kind of irrelevant – particularly if the alternative was for him to announce to the world that his employer is a shill for the League.
BTW I'm not really defending Mort here – he got a report wrong and when you live by a source you die by a source. Even more to the point, when you make a living off of sidling up to a powerful institution, you have to understand the risk that you may outgrow your usefulness to said institution someday. To that end, I've found Mort's comments since he tried to straighten things out about Twitter and the like to be as pathetic as anyone here.
That said, I just don't see any evidence that ESPN wasn't in some respect behind Mort standing behind this report up as long as he did. That he weakly defended it well after the fact seems kind of irrelevant – particularly if the alternative was for him to announce to the world that his employer is a shill for the League.
IN A WORLD where integrity matters least...where careers can be made and lost like a turd flushed down the bowl...One man REFUSES to back down and admit he was wrong.
Coming THIS SUMMER: A story of BLIND STUBBORNNESS in the face of OVERWHELMING evidence.
Chris Mortenson stars in:
"I STAND BY MY REPORT".
Coming THIS SUMMER: A story of BLIND STUBBORNNESS in the face of OVERWHELMING evidence.
Chris Mortenson stars in:
"I STAND BY MY REPORT".
I wouldn't call that the tide turning. I'd call that the inevitable "we the media are tired of this. Let's move onto something else. Unless there is some new juicy tidbit. Otherwise, I'm so over this.lTheoShmeo said:
edmunddantes said:
Yup.
"Hey, as it becomes increasingly evident that the whole thing was a sham and we all egged on the people with torches and pitchforks, how about we just pull down the curtain on this and let the amber of history seal this whole thing up so we can stop having to backpedal or second guess our initial takes, ok?"
You realize that you cannot prove a negative, right? Also, the way you are framing the issue is so convoluted - "that ESPN wasn't in some respect behind Mort standing behind this report" - that it really is the definition of torturing logic.Van Everyman said:
Don't get me wrong, I completely understand that ESPN has earned the contempt we all throw at it. But in the case of Mort, I don't look at the shell of a reporter that he has become and feel sadness. I feel a sense of karmic justice.
Ian O'Connor has written nothing but ignorant, illogical, nonsensical, insane, ESPNFL-slanted shit since this started. Fuck him.
How about this: with very few exceptions, ESPN has bent over backwards to present the NFL's viewpoint for the duration of Deflategate, so logic would follow that the network did the League's bidding in keeping Mort's tweet up as long as possible.Average Reds said:
Is that really so tortured? I'm not suggesting that Mort isn't on the receiving end of some form of karmic justice. But you can be a defensive dick, decent-but-compromised reporter and a pawn at the same time. These things aren't mutually exclusive.
Zero sympathy for Mortensen, Zero. If he valued his reputation at all, he would have walked back his report and admitted his mistake as soon as it was clear that he was lied to or given false information. Mortensen did not have to accept his employer's edict (if it even existed) to stand behind his thoroughly discredited report. By all accounts, he is (or was) one of the most influential NFL guys at the network if not the entire football covering media. I think he could have told his ESPN masters to shove it and insisted that he had to correct the report, and be willing to suffer the consequences of that decision if need be (I don't think ESPN would have fired him). Had he done that, he would have at least preserved some morsel of his integrity. Instead, he's a catatonic, discredited rube of a reporter appearing on Sunday ESPN shows. He can go fuck himself.Devizier said:
Agreed with the above and was shouting that all SB week.
He threw a bomb into a crowded theater, locked the doors and stopped the fireman from helping. He deserves what he gets now, 100%.
He threw a bomb into a crowded theater, locked the doors and stopped the fireman from helping. He deserves what he gets now, 100%.
Wow, man. Sure you didn't forget the part where he lead a kindergarten class in first by promising free candy, then stuck a shiv in the distracted fireman from behind?ifmanis5 said:
I think you and I should agree to donate our brains to science for some sort of differential analysis when we die, because I read that this morning and thought, "Shit, maybe TheoShmeo's right. This clown is trying to push the same tired narrative while cloaking it in a thin veneer of reasonableness." :lol:TheoShmeo said:
I don't know what it is, man. If you and I ever agree on something, people should probably buy stock in it immediately. Or canned goods and bottled water. Probably the latter.
That O'Connor article still implies that this all started because of an intercepted pass that they happened to notice was under-inflated, which we know for a fact is not where it started considering the Ravens "tipped them off" or whatever.
Is it that these guys are dumb and just don't know the facts they are trying to report on or are they intentionally being misleading? I don't know which is worse at this point.
Is it that these guys are dumb and just don't know the facts they are trying to report on or are they intentionally being misleading? I don't know which is worse at this point.
Well seeing as how you have the facts wrong too maybe it is a little of both. It came out in the Wells Report that the Colts first had concerns during the first Pats game in Indy.
Edited to add the excerpt. Also, I didn't mean to be so snarky, but if we want / expect others to get the facts right, then we need to make sure we do too
Edited to add the excerpt. Also, I didn't mean to be so snarky, but if we want / expect others to get the facts right, then we need to make sure we do too
tims4wins said:
But didn't we learn that, since the Colts personnel controlled the footballs, this claim has little merit? I do think it's safe to say we should be careful using the terms, "Wells Report" and "facts" within the same sentence.
Mort's the same guy who it seems more probable than not just completely made up a report last year that Brady's input into the offense was being decreased, which was creating a rift between him and the coaches. Think about how absurd the idea of that is, now that we're outside the panic bubble created by the KC debacle. He preyed on us when we were emotionally weak, just like Dennis Hastert.
JimBoSox9 said:
I called my source and asked him. He didn't call me. So I don't think he's intentionally putting damaging stuff out there.
JimBoSox9 said:
I just read two reports from two people that he's a pederast. It has to be true now.MainerInExile said:
Elway is no fool. This type of quote reminds me of how Pat Riley used to talk about Michael Jordan, another ruthless competitor who used every perceived slight he could find. Riley always talked about Jordan as the GOAT, never hinting at anything less.
dcmissle said:
His numbers against NE are weird--and I'll admit they were not as good as they were in memory, because I thought I remembered him tearing us up. He did go 10-0 (9-0 regular season), but only threw for 11 TDs and had 8 picks.
The first 5 times they played in the regular season, the margins of victory were 7, 7, 11, 11, and 3, and in 2 of those games he completed less than 50% of his passes.
He had 3 blowouts, in 95, 96, and 97, but in 95 the Pats were a 6 win team. The 96 and 97 teams were 10+ wins but he wasn't particularly good in either game: 14/23, 175 yards, 1/1 TD/INT and 13/27, 196 yards, 0/2 TD/INT. Those games were won by Terrell Davis, who went over 150 yards in each of those last 2 games, and as a team the Broncos rushed or nearly 200 yards both times.
His only postseason game was at the end of the 86 season, and he was pretty bad--13/27, 257 yards, 1/2 TD/INT. The game after that was The Drive against Cleveland.
Only once did he throw for 300+ yards (first time they played), 4 times he was under 50% completion, and 5 times under 200 yards.
It's kind of like how in my memory, Eddie Murray hit about .800 against the Red Sox when I was growing up.
dcmissle said:
About 15 years ago I had "breakfast" with Elway around 4am in Vegas. It's a long, drunken story that I don't really feel like getting into - but I can tell you that during the 45 minutes I spent with him, he was AWESOME. An extremely nice, funny guy who was down to earth. I was with two lifelong Raider fans and even they fell in love with the guy.
It is sufficient to stop at 10 - 0.
My color commentary is that whenever those quite respectable Pats teams seemed to have Elway contained, receivers covered, he killed them with his legs for a first down. Then would come the 20 yard missile for another first down or TD.
My color commentary is that whenever those quite respectable Pats teams seemed to have Elway contained, receivers covered, he killed them with his legs for a first down. Then would come the 20 yard missile for another first down or TD.
The thing I remember about those Elway vs. Patriots games was how the Pats usually lost in typical Patriots (for the era) fashion.DrewDawg said:
The post season game ended with Tony Eason being sacked in his end zone for a safety, the 6th time Eason was sacked that game. The Pats were pinned deep because Irving Fryer decided to field the punt instead of letting go into the end zone for a touchback. The other painful part of that game was how the Patriots ended up having to go to Denver, dropping 2 crucial December games to Cincinnati and the 49'ers.
Then there was the game in 1987 where the Pats were trying to keep their faint playoff hopes alive. With the Pats down by 4, Elway punts the ball out of a shotgun snap, pinning New England deep late in the 4th quarter. A couple of plays later Mark Haynes intercepts a Tom Ramsey pass for an easy TD sealing the game for Denver, a game that the Pats actually led by 3 at the start of the final quarter.
The game in 1996 became noted for the infamous fake punt attempt that set up an easy TD for the Broncos early on.
The 1997 game was only 14-13 at the half, with 7 of the Broncos' points coming courtesy of one of Bledsoe's gift wrapped pick 6 plays. In the 2nd half, Pete Carroll is badly outcoached by Shanahan, and the players are badly outplayed on both sides of the ball as the Broncos run off 20 unanswered points.
The young-uns on this forum have no idea how good they have it.
I was at that game. IIRC the Pats executed an excellent fake punt early except it was just flat out dropped.
tims4wins said:
That one apparently was not in BB's memory vault when he gave Chung free rein to call a fake 14 years later.
Well it was a pass from Tom Tupa who actually played QB for the Jets at one point. It was actually a great play call
That's not what I mean. How does that play have to do with whether or not they should have attempted a fake punt 14 years later?
Was there something specific about that play which BB forgot to impart upon Chung when giving him the parameters within which he should audible the fake? Or just never call a fake punt because it didn't work in '96?
Was there something specific about that play which BB forgot to impart upon Chung when giving him the parameters within which he should audible the fake? Or just never call a fake punt because it didn't work in '96?
It was a feeble attempt at a joke playing off BB's encyclopedic knowledge of all football plays ever.
And I took you seriously. Ironically, it's BB's encyclopedic knowledge of football which made me do so.loshjott said:
My bad.
The old fake punt against Denver worked in that Bruschi was wide open and would have had the first down. It was a play call that Parcells later admitted was one of this biggest regrets from that season.
