I don’t see the league going soft on the Patriots, not after Troy Vincent, the discipline czar, came down heavy on the Browns for Textgate and the Falcons for Noisegate. Brady should be suspended for a few games, at the very least, for his role in this scheme. Take your time and read the Wells Report – I blew off the 100-page treatise on scientific testing – and you can’t come to any other conclusion: Brady was central to the tampering of those footballs. The All-American boy isn’t quite so clean, after all.
By Bob Kravitz, Indianapolis Star
Sorry, Bob Kraft.
There will be no apology coming from the National Football League or anybody else, something he demanded at the Super Bowl should the league exonerate his club.
If anything, Kraft should be offering organizational apologies for a team that has now been found guilty of circumventing the rules twice in recent years.
How about an apology from Tom Brady, who lied through his perfect pearly whites before and during this process?
It’s fair to assume the Patriots have been cheating – specifically, playing with deflated footballs – for a very long time. This is not a minor issue; we’re talking here about the integrity of the game, about maintaining a level playing field. Nobody ever suggested the footballs played any role in the Patriots’ 45-7 battering of the Colts, but if I’m, say, the Baltimore Ravens, I’m absolutely furious. If I’m any of those teams the Patriots beat over the years on their way to all those Super Bowls, I’m furious. And if I’m Roger Goodell, who was directly challenged by Kraft but properly hired independent investigators to pursue this case, I’m furious, too.
Bottom line, his league’s Super Bowl champions have a Scarlet Letter, another asterisk to add to their growing collection. This couples up with SpyGate, another misdeed that cost Bill Belichick a half-million dollars, and it makes it more likely that the league will bring the hammer on a recidivist organization.
“Based on evidence developed in connection with the investigation and summarized in this Report, we have concluded that it is more probable than not that New England Patriots personnel participated in violations of the NFL Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate attempt to circumvent those rules,” the Wells investigation read.
The report added there was a “deliberate effort to release air from the Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referee [Walt Anderson].” The deed was done by Patriots’ employee Jim McNally, who in a text message referred to himself as “the deflator.”
I don’t see the league going soft on the Patriots, not after Troy Vincent, the discipline czar, came down heavy on the Browns for Textgate and the Falcons for Noisegate. Brady should be suspended for a few games, at the very least, for his role in this scheme. Take your time and read the Wells Report – I blew off the 100-page treatise on scientific testing – and you can’t come to any other conclusion: Brady was central to the tampering of those footballs. The All-American boy isn’t quite so clean, after all.
“During his interview, Brady denied any knowledge of or involvement in any efforts to deflate game balls…” the report read. “He claimed that prior to the events surrounding the AFC Championship Game, he did not know McNally’s name… We found these claims not plausible and contradicted by other evidence.”
It added, “It’s more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of [Patriots’ employees] involving the release of air from Patriots’ game balls.”
Bob Kravitz is the first journalist who blew the whistle on Deflategate last January.
