The greatest player to ever play the game, who has never tested positive for PEDs, has never been arrested, has never been involved in any off the field incident that has brought shame on him or the league, was dragged repeatedly over something that never happened, had an entire Super Bowl run up subsumed by inane speculation about him being a cheater, and ultimately was suspended for four games for that same thing that never happened. And most of the national football media has never properly covered the incident. And 9/10 opposing fans you talk to think he deflated the footballs.
I will just say that deflategate made me realize that there are a lot of “total and unredeemable morons” out there. It was shocking. Further events have not dissuaded me from this conclusion.
That is sadly a true and reasonable assessment.
He was dragged over a thing that had it happened exactly as the critics alleged, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS, OR AT WORSE THE FOOTBALL EQUIVALENT OF DRIVING 60 IN A 55 ZONE!
The part that makes it worth bringing up is how little trouble the league has with Soviet era misinformation.
And the Pats were docked a first and fourth round pick, and that helped contribute to the loss of yet ANOTHER pick with the ridiculous Browns video story from a couple of years ago. So the ramifications for the Patriots franchise are still being felt. We have every right to still be pissed off at this.
Beyond any impact on the Pats, everyone should be upset at how the NFL gets away with this crap and never gets called on it. The big announcement about funding concussion research with the NIH and then bailing and the PR stunts about owning the domestic violence space are probably the two most notorious examples.
Which is what never made any sense to me. I get that the league office, run by a bunch of Jets fans, hated the Patriots and that oh so smug asshole Bill Belichick.
We wouldn't accept one anonymous source as proof the Patriots did something wrong. Why accept one anonymous source that the NFL purposely destroyed the 2015 readings to cover their ass?
He cites no factual basis for this; it's just his supposition. He didn't see the numbers, so he can't prove his thesis.
He's using his opinion that the Patriots got screwed and lining things up to fit his narrative. Where have we heard that before ... in the opposite direction? And then says that "something fishy" was happening," they just weren't caught in the act.
To recap, the NFL did a lousy job, and might have covered up evidence that would have cleared the Patriots. But the Patriots were doing something fishy and Brady was decidedly unconvincing when he said he didn't think he cheated.
I hate the NFL. I think that Goodell is scum. The way they handle pretty much everything is terrible. But that wasn't the point. I was simply saying that seven years later, as much as Pats fans might feel that the team was wronged, it's not worth getting all worked up all over again.
True, but again, Florio's drawing his conclusion from the same scant evidence point ... and he established his conclusion ("the Patriots got screwed") and saw everything through that lens.
That’s because he won 4 SBs, including a historic comeback, since the bogus claims were made against him, which is about as awesome as it gets given the odds of doing it.
We also know that the NFL kept track of these numbers in 2015, never released them, and they’ve never been leaked or come out since, so. . . . . . .everyone knows what happened, this is just putting it back out there, and I hope like fuck that it catches some headlines this week, and would love to see Kraft (won’t) and Brady (unlikely) pile on the NFL pig pile right now and say something about what bullshit it was to reignite things (despite not wanting to be scolded here on SoSH for talking about it again).
Well, like always, it would be about the coverup being way worse than the “crime”, right ?
And even while he's making that inference, Florio says that the Patriots were doing "something fishy" and that Brady was "unconvincing" when talking about it.
Yay! I so proud of the NFL for successfully conducting a 5th grade science experiment. What's next? Are they gonna dissect a frog?
I find it a little strange to go after Florio – a guy who I believe was on whatever we decided to ultimately call the White List. The main headline of this piece is that the league actively destroyed evidence (which I believe Florio doesn’t mention they also did with Spygate). Then he says, “Yeah there were also the Deflator and Dorito Dink’s texts and Brady’s lame press conference … but they still got screwed.”
And I'm saying that the "evidence" they destroyed had nothing to do with the balls used in Deflategate, but the results the next season that allegedly shows that the Ideal Gas Law proves that the Patriots might not have deflated balls purposely. He then uses that "information" -- from a single, unnamed source, so who the hell knows that person's motives -- to go back in time and say the Patriots got screwed. As I said before, just because the source says something that buffets our beliefs doesn't mean that the source is telling the truth.
Huh?
You know what would be a great idea? If the NFL published the 2015 findings. How can they be expunged anyway? No one keeps copy?
