This one really gets me. A 55 year old man goes into a small bathroom and over the course of 90 seconds deflates 12 balls by some minuscule amount of PSI(by average). That's the story. That's what they came up with.
So can SoSH talk about Deflategate again?
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I'm sorry but what? Is this an elaborate troll job?
Honestly, the most exonerating thing from the Pat's standpoint is that the NFL ran tests the next year and refused to release the results. That alone is proof they did nothing wrong because we all know that if the NFL ran tests in the cold and found that no balls PSI decreased they would have quickly released the results.
Also science, but if you wrote all of the above you don't actually care about science.
And doesn't screw any of them up too much, like down to 7.5 or anything like that. I mean if that's their story it was hardly a precise operation.
One of the big things for me personally is that before DFG, no one ever gave a single shit about the air pressure of a football. Yes, the league had a written spec, but it was never enforced. Shit, the Aaron Rodgers over-inflation thing was laughed off by the announcers (Collinsworth maybe?) talking about it. The only reason that the refs checked the Patriots footballs was that somebody ratted on them, so the league told the refs to check them with a pressure gauge.
The refs, who didn’t even know which gauge they used and likely never in their careers had used a pressure gauge to check the pressure of a football.
The pressure gauges, who someone probably had to run down to Dicks Sporting Goods to buy. They are trying to measure to a tenth of a psi with a pressure gauge that does not have that level of accuracy. Mona Lisa Vito can’t produce a certificate of calibration for any of the gauges that were used. Before this whole hubbabaloo, they were likely checking the footballs by eyesight for any visible blemishes, and by squeezing them with their hands. Hey, this ones a little soft, throw some air in it.
It was, and still is a complete joke
The refs, who didn’t even know which gauge they used and likely never in their careers had used a pressure gauge to check the pressure of a football.
The pressure gauges, who someone probably had to run down to Dicks Sporting Goods to buy. They are trying to measure to a tenth of a psi with a pressure gauge that does not have that level of accuracy. Mona Lisa Vito can’t produce a certificate of calibration for any of the gauges that were used. Before this whole hubbabaloo, they were likely checking the footballs by eyesight for any visible blemishes, and by squeezing them with their hands. Hey, this ones a little soft, throw some air in it.
It was, and still is a complete joke
That was imprecise writing on my part. I wasn’t trying to imply CK and his situation had any bearing on how Goodell handled deflategate. It was just another ingredient in the NFL’s toxic stew that made me quit watching football.
Are you old enough to remember the Iraq war?
I think Deflategate relates to Trump in the sense that a group of ultra-privileged winners are so blinded by rage at a perceived slight from years ago that they flatly reject any calm discussion and instead live inside their own bubble of information where death threats are common and alternative views are shouted down.
Also, that Deflategate, of all things, is what enrages you about due process in America today is either disingenuous or depressing.
I hate cultural explanations because "culture" is a catch-all that is hard to analyze. Most things that have cultural explanations (tipping, waiting in line) resist causal analysis due to this. But I'm hard-pressed to think of another reason that Patriots fans are so exorcised about something that had no impact on performance (although you are right that they lost a draft pick. If only the Pats could have drafted the next Daniel Fells). So I fall back on culture. I guess we'll all have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves why we're so enraged and violent.
P.S. I was trying to figure out Brady's fine in terms of his income, and I wasn't including Giselle. Trying to argue the size of Brady's fine by using his base salary is not really arguing in good faith.
The refs in that game against the Colts DIDN'T EVEN WRITE DOWN THE INITIAL PRESSURES BEFORE THE GAME.
That's how important everyone thought this nonsense really was.
Right, which also suggests that he took every ball out and didn't replace them in the bag right away after deflating them because it'd be a goddamn miracle to mix the deflated balls back into the duffle and not grab a ball that you've already deflated. Pure insanity.
He was about to go out to the field with the balls, then he saw that the NFC Championship game went to OT. So he decided to take a piss while he had a minute. That seems plausible no?
Sure does. And having been told not to let the footballs out of his sight, he brought the bag into the bathroom with him. 90 seconds later he was all done.
The biggest issues that Brady had were:
a.) Nobody in the NFL gave a shit about ball pressure. Sure, sometimes the refs would check the balls and add or remove air if they were a bit out of spec. But that was it; seemed like the refs laughed about it more often than not. Or many times didn't even bother to check because the crew had more important things to discuss (points of emphasis, etc.). And nobody cared if the equipment guy took the balls into the restroom for a 90 seconds before the game.
b.) The one text where it was noted "the refs fucked us. Brady is pissed" when the refs pumped the balls up before one game.
c.) Brady's (correct) refusal to turn over his phone, and his (slightly less correct) decision to destroy his phone later. DcMissle (RIP) correctly noted that the appeals judges would have a problem with the destruction of the phone, even if it was standard op procedure for someone of Brady's profile.
d.) The fact that Brady had to prove something didn't happen; the NFL had no burden of proof they had to clear.
e.) The Pats won too much. Every other NFL city hated the fact that the New England Patriots, the formerly biggest joke of all joke franchises, completely dominated the league for 2 decades. Owners, GM's, coaches, players, fans, visiting teams media mouthpieces, etc., all hated the Pats for that very reason. It all started when the Pats beat Bill Poilan's Colts. Continued when the Pats ran the perfectly legal "ineligible receiver" play against the Ravens; somehow just running that play was considered poor sportsmanship by Shank, Borges and the rest of them. Pure jealousy.
f.) Goodell still had a bug up his ass about Spygate 7 years after the fact.
The NFL's goal from the outset was to find someone to blame. Paul-Weiss and Exponent were more than happy to oblige, and the whole concept of pressure vs. temperature was literally too complex for literally anyone in sports media to grasp. About the only thing the lawyers did that was "out of turn" was that they exonerated Belichick completely. That probably wasn't Goodell's desired outcome, but there was literally zero evidence to implicate him, and not even Paul-Weiss was willing to commit outright fraud.
a.) Nobody in the NFL gave a shit about ball pressure. Sure, sometimes the refs would check the balls and add or remove air if they were a bit out of spec. But that was it; seemed like the refs laughed about it more often than not. Or many times didn't even bother to check because the crew had more important things to discuss (points of emphasis, etc.). And nobody cared if the equipment guy took the balls into the restroom for a 90 seconds before the game.
b.) The one text where it was noted "the refs fucked us. Brady is pissed" when the refs pumped the balls up before one game.
c.) Brady's (correct) refusal to turn over his phone, and his (slightly less correct) decision to destroy his phone later. DcMissle (RIP) correctly noted that the appeals judges would have a problem with the destruction of the phone, even if it was standard op procedure for someone of Brady's profile.
d.) The fact that Brady had to prove something didn't happen; the NFL had no burden of proof they had to clear.
e.) The Pats won too much. Every other NFL city hated the fact that the New England Patriots, the formerly biggest joke of all joke franchises, completely dominated the league for 2 decades. Owners, GM's, coaches, players, fans, visiting teams media mouthpieces, etc., all hated the Pats for that very reason. It all started when the Pats beat Bill Poilan's Colts. Continued when the Pats ran the perfectly legal "ineligible receiver" play against the Ravens; somehow just running that play was considered poor sportsmanship by Shank, Borges and the rest of them. Pure jealousy.
f.) Goodell still had a bug up his ass about Spygate 7 years after the fact.
The NFL's goal from the outset was to find someone to blame. Paul-Weiss and Exponent were more than happy to oblige, and the whole concept of pressure vs. temperature was literally too complex for literally anyone in sports media to grasp. About the only thing the lawyers did that was "out of turn" was that they exonerated Belichick completely. That probably wasn't Goodell's desired outcome, but there was literally zero evidence to implicate him, and not even Paul-Weiss was willing to commit outright fraud.
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Come on, that all played out over a long stretch of time. Before social media was anything like it is now. It was not a situation that provided for an instant, almost spontaneous "holy shit" moment where millions of people around the world were simultaneously and suddenly rendered devoid of all reason.
Never mind that unlike the example you use, it was not a well planned, sophisticated disinformation campaign. The insanity that ensued was based almost entirely on one stupid, inaccurate tweet.
The one thing I believe might have happened is that in the Jets game the refs pumped the balls up to about 16 PSI and Brady was pissed so the guys took some air out as the game went on. I do think that's a reasonable guess. "Those fuckin' things were like rocks" was the text I remember.
And crazily....if that actually happened, then the refs would have been responsible for inflating footballs outside their legal range, yet if the Pats took some air out of them back down to the legal limit, the Pats would have been guilty of illegal football tampering.
Which is soooooooooo dumb.
I couldn't make it very far in this thread, which tells me that for me personally, I am completely, 100% over DFG, and have no interest in discussing it any more. Progress for me.
Well, now that we watched our QB throw fungo practice to WRs for a whole season, we have bigger fish to fry.
There are three claims here that are not grounded in reality.
1) Patriots fans live in their own bubble of information - What credible information about deflategate was not reckoned with by Patriots fans?
2) Death threats are common - seriously?
3) Alternative views are shouted down - proving that hacky, bad science is hacky and bad is exactly analogous to how Trumpism deals with alternative viewpoints. This is at best a stretch.
The second bolded part is such a strawman that I might even suggest you are being disingenuous.
Was that calm enough or did I just do a Trumpism?
Even if the NFL offers an apology and awards draft picks back to the Patriots (and the #1 overall draft pick needs to go to the Patriots due to the value change in the years lost) I will feel vindicated but I will never forgive anyone who was involved.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Yes, that's a perfect summary of what's going on here. I'm being disingenuous. Got it.
This meandering mess of a non-sequitor certainly seems to have landed where you wanted it, but I'm not sure that's anything to be proud of.
You weren't "trying" to do anything. You went with a random guess, I corrected it. It's part of my culture.
Wow. So reading that thread - and trying to do it without succumbing to the rising bile in my throat - was not fun.
I dunno - is it the Inauguration and the many threats and stresses there? Is it the Patriots first losing season in 2 decades? Is it that the pandemic is still WILDLY out of control?
Or maybe SOSH really isn't ready to talk about DFG again?
Edit: and the timing of the documentary and various responses, not sure if anyone mentioned it, is pretty much perfect for sticking a needle in Brady's eye and reputation just as he yet again rises to the very top of the heap. He WILL use it to fuel his drive for his 7th ring.
I dunno - is it the Inauguration and the many threats and stresses there? Is it the Patriots first losing season in 2 decades? Is it that the pandemic is still WILDLY out of control?
Or maybe SOSH really isn't ready to talk about DFG again?
Edit: and the timing of the documentary and various responses, not sure if anyone mentioned it, is pretty much perfect for sticking a needle in Brady's eye and reputation just as he yet again rises to the very top of the heap. He WILL use it to fuel his drive for his 7th ring.
https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/dfg-canceling-the-noise.10930/
If you are reading this thread thinking, "man this is a great discussion, I wish there were another zillion posts on the topic!"
If you are reading this thread thinking, "man this is a great discussion, I wish there were another zillion posts on the topic!"
If we're doing the whole historical parallels thing I actually agree the Iraq War is a way better comparison than Trump/Qanon. QAnon (and the larger "stolen election" narrative) is just a batshit insane theory with not even a hint of evidence to support it that a relatively small percentage of the population (though obviously much, much too large for the good of the country) believes. The NFL equivalent would be if Roger Goodell refused to award the Lombardi Trophy to the Patriots in 2014 because he thought Belichick was an alien from another world or something.
Conversely while I take CR67's point about social media, there are a lot of other parallels - namely, that a large majority of Americans were duped by those in power and a bunch of supposed "experts" into believing something that played into their preconceived notions. With Deflategate most Americans already hated the Pats and thought of them as cheaters so the idea that the Patriots were fucking with the pressure in balls probably didn't seem terribly far-fetched, as ridiculous as it is in retrospect (and was at the time to Pats fans). With Iraq, most Americans were still in post-9/11 jingoism/Patriot Act/"if you're not with us you're against us" mode and so, similarly, didn't need much convincing when they saw a bunch of politicians from both sides of the aisle saying that we needed to invade Iraq due to WMDs.
But maybe the point is that the specific comparison doesn't matter as all of the things we are discussing are part of the inevitable human tendency to believe things we want to believe are true, regardless of evidence - certainly it isn't limited to just sports and politics, as any trial lawyer or jury consultant could tell you.
Conversely while I take CR67's point about social media, there are a lot of other parallels - namely, that a large majority of Americans were duped by those in power and a bunch of supposed "experts" into believing something that played into their preconceived notions. With Deflategate most Americans already hated the Pats and thought of them as cheaters so the idea that the Patriots were fucking with the pressure in balls probably didn't seem terribly far-fetched, as ridiculous as it is in retrospect (and was at the time to Pats fans). With Iraq, most Americans were still in post-9/11 jingoism/Patriot Act/"if you're not with us you're against us" mode and so, similarly, didn't need much convincing when they saw a bunch of politicians from both sides of the aisle saying that we needed to invade Iraq due to WMDs.
But maybe the point is that the specific comparison doesn't matter as all of the things we are discussing are part of the inevitable human tendency to believe things we want to believe are true, regardless of evidence - certainly it isn't limited to just sports and politics, as any trial lawyer or jury consultant could tell you.
This is ALL anyone operating in good faith has to know about Deflategate. The idea that the Commish could foist his subsequent "spot checks" story on the world and not be absolutely pilloried for it by a whole array of media just shows how nuts things are. As the Commish proudly said about the NFL at his SB press conference, "We have the best partners in media!"
Assuming this post was made in good faith, it is true the Pats won the SB that year, but the ramifications of Deflategate go on and on in terms of reputations damaged, lost picks, and further NFL punishments ratcheting up as one "transgression" increases the need to enact further penalties on the Pats when a warning should be appropriate, and harsher penalties than should otherwise be levied. It's never going to be "over" as much as anyone would like. The Pats don't get to wipe the slate clean with the league after 6 years of safe driving.
"Combined with the Pats’ reputation for bending the rules" There it is. The NFL is quite capable of turning down the volume if not outright "disappearing" stories it wants to go away. Sticking just to the Goodell reign, the Giants had the coach illegally talking to his quarterback on the field as the game was being played, but almost no one nationally, even NFL fans, knows about it. It certainly wasn't anything close to the lead story on the NBC/CBS/ABC News. The Steelers may have been playing with under-inflated footballs in 2016, but the NFL essentially ignored it. Seattle has gone through a string of practice violations. The Texans in 2020 had organized workouts {despite COVID-19 restrictions} that were a violation of both integrity of the game concerns and health & safety concerns. Heck, NFL HQ claimed to not have possession of the Ray Rice tape, and folks bought it.
I am pretty sure the item with "deflate and give somebody that jacket" with the screencap of the guy wearing/holding the bulky jacket in the game vs. the Packers that was happening when the text was sent is out there if you want to find it.
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Yes, there was that odd duality of the harsh penalty for Spygate having to be evidence of major violations, but yet somehow not being harsh enough. Regarding your B above, you are leaving out the very public role Kraft played in saving Goodell from the real prospect of being forced to resign as Commish during the Ray Rice fiasco. www.cbsnews.com/video/patriots-owner-bob-kraft-on-ray-rice-incident-thursday-night-football/
I am not sure that your D above is valid. It just may have been the work of Mike Kensil and other anti-Pats minions at NFL HQ starting a conflagration, and then Goodell moving under pressure from other owners and elsewhere to keep himself from getting burned. Kensil was effectively banished to China by the NFL in the Deflategate aftermath, possibly because he had dragged the NFL and the Commish especially into the whole morass.
El Jeffe, I guess you were not a regular reader of the Deflategate threads or the Well Report in Context?
Regarding #1: As Bowhemian noted in a post after yours, attaching an expectancy of high precision to the pressure gauges is not merited right from the start. Add in the officials clumsily trying to execute the pressure readings in an unprecedented and tense halftime procedure with the likes of Kensil breathing down their necks. The Patriots footballs were also measured before the Colts ones and were exposed to different conditions during the first half of the game.
Regarding #2: the pre-game routine was disrupted by the earlier game running long. The NFL ordered a delay to the start of the Pats game. The extended time may have led to McNally having to answer "nature's call" when he did. Per league gameday rules, he was instructed to never let the bag of footballs out of his sight, so into the toilet they went.
Regarding #3: essentially irrelevant given the circumstances noted regarding your #1.
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Saying that there has been no long lasting effect (@Phil Plantier ) is BS even if the lost first rounder had already retired. The Pats are without their third round pick in the 2021 draft because of the “multiple offender” angle of the Bengals incident last year.
FYI, Exponent added a constant to the Ideal Gas Law which just coincidentally served to make it harder for the balls to hit the allowed range. If you remove that constant and don't second guess the refs on which gauge they used then every single ball fell within the allowed range.
Their reason for adding this constant was under the guise of using Indianapolis's balls as a control, which sounds good on first blush. Controls are good right? Then you remember that the Ideal Gas Law is a freaking scientific Law and it doesn't need any control added by hacks who massage data until it says what their client wants it so say. Foxboro Stadium doesn't magically alter physics within it.
Indy's balls sat there heating up for 10 minutes so of course when they were measured that had lost less PSI than NE's. That standard (10 minutes of heating up) was then applied to NE's balls, which were measured immediately without the opportunity to heat up.
For some reason barely anyone talked about this at the time, and it has mostly been forgotten since.
The first round pick that they lost would have been under contract for the 2018 super bowl that they lost to the Eagles.
Wasn't it the Ravens coaches and players who ratted to the Colts and Kravitz about it from the game the week before??
This is a brilliant take and indeed a sad shape of things to come. I read this behind the paywall and will concur he is furiously trying to cover his ass ahead of the documentary. This is no moment of personal reflection.
Ted Wells also interviewed Dean Pees and the Ravens ST coach for reasons that were never explained.
I forget the Dean Pees link for Wells. Maybe it was to get corroboration from a former Patriots coach about information supplied by the Pats?
The Ravens ST coach had made the initial complaint about his team's kicking balls being messed with during the division round game. As it turned out one of the NFL employees had been stealing game-used footballs, and this is what actually caused the complaint against the Patriots by the Ravens.
The Ravens ST coach had made the initial complaint about his team's kicking balls being messed with during the division round game. As it turned out one of the NFL employees had been stealing game-used footballs, and this is what actually caused the complaint against the Patriots by the Ravens.
Yes, and the conversation was started upthread by RG33. Owners. And I think the media and fans get their signals and then it is dog whistled down stream, but as such things go, it is not that easy to substantiate. But the relentless need to see the Pats as cheating, and therefore the league's more than complicity in trying to 'tarnish' their own greatest dynasty has always seemed troped to me. What is the motive for this? I don't know, but I think it is worth considering that the hostility to the Pats is not just normal sore loser syndrome. There have been plenty of dynasties before that don't get this treatment. Indeed, in football, other good teams get the opposite as their cheating is just given the "boys will be boys" routine (insert 'your team cheats' link here). And, btw, we're in the middle of a conversation in which we are working through the idea of Patriots Paranoia being a precursor for Qanon, et al. I'll only add that to the extent this is an element of things, it is wrapped up in an obvious wider resentment that the greatest dynasty in football comes from Massachusetts. For lots of America (the god, guns, football parts of the landscape) its like having NASCAR dominate by a some guy from Cambridge.
I don't really need to keep on with this. I see it as a dog whistle, from the top of the league on down and I suspect I'm not going to find some Parler page that lays it all out explicitly, so I'll let it go.
Re-reading, this was a great thread until Mort dropped his BS tweet about 11 of 12. Then it almost immediately pivots to recrimination and pants wetting about quitting fandom if Belichick had intentionally flouted this utterly meaningless rule.
Not to pick on anyone in particular, because I was in agreement at the time with this post, but:
I was in agreement that this was a silly thing, that Colts fans were being ridiculous, and yet.... even though BB wasn't suspended, Brady was, they lost draft picks, etc. Just incredible, really.
I was in agreement that this was a silly thing, that Colts fans were being ridiculous, and yet.... even though BB wasn't suspended, Brady was, they lost draft picks, etc. Just incredible, really.
“They are Super Bowl Champions...for now”
I mean what fan base ever had to hear something like that from an announcer after winning it all? Infuriating.
Not even the fans of Pete Carroll’s USC team didn’t have to hear it, and they lost their title.
I mean what fan base ever had to hear something like that from an announcer after winning it all? Infuriating.
Not even the fans of Pete Carroll’s USC team didn’t have to hear it, and they lost their title.
I remember being horrified when this starting leaking out because it should have been obvious to everyone here that went through Spygate that it was going to be a Very Big Thing.
Maybe it’s because I’ve lived outside of New England for the past 20 years, but the simmering resentment and suspicion, however unwarranted, toward the Patriots by huge swaths of every other teams’ fandom made it immediately clear to me that people would jump on this without hesitation and exploit it with fucking glee.
Yeah. At first I thought it was silly because...I mean.....REALLY? "Deflating footballs"??? But then it didn't take long for this to get traction and be a serious thing, and then yeah, I was like holy crap this is gonna be a problem.
Christ almighty, it was the lead story on the national fucking news broadcasts during that week. In what world does that happen for any other team except for maybe the Cowboys?
Also, what ever happened to that shitbag Kensil? Didn't he get shipped off to be the NFL Ambassador to China or something? I would love to see him get grilled about his role in this whole thing.
I watched it last night. I learned nothing new about Deflategate itself, but it is a well-put together summary of the complete bullshit that was the entire process. It didn't bother with some bits it could have, but it was a pretty damning indictment of the NFL. Of course, I'm biased, but yeah, I'd say it's worth $5.
Given the harshness of the penalty for Bountygate, there was a feeling (ridiculous as it was) around the league that the Patriots had gotten off easy with Spygate, and especially that Belichick should have been suspended. Deflategate was the league's (and Belichick's detractors) opportunity to right that wrong. Combine that with the jealousy and hatred of the Pats by all the usual suspects and you get the cluster that was Deflategate.
Which, of course, is absurd given that Spygate was a violation regarding the location of the cameraman, not that filming was per se a rules violation. But that basic fucking distinction was completely ignored by the NFL and media once things spiraled out of control because they worried they'd look weak and foolish if they admitted that maybe they overreacted.
Goodell could have very easily achieved his objective and also extinguished the lingering stink of the incident if they had quickly, and assertively, clarified that the penalty was stiff *not* because of any competitive advantage the filming may have given the Patriots, but because it was sending a message that repeat rule breakers, regardless of the underlying offense, would be dealt with harshly. Instead they kind of ducked and smirked and then had that stupid press conference where they played the tapes and then destroyed the, which again reinforced the idea that the issue was the tapes themselves and not the violation of the rule regarding location of filming.