Brady 4 game suspension ruled valid

[LesBaker]

He leads with the helmet. It's a penalty and has been for years but often doesn't get called.

He looks like he is launching himself too which is supposed to draw flags.

 

[drasconis]

He leads with the helmet. It's a penalty and has been for years but often doesn't get called.

He looks like he is launching himself too which is supposed to draw flags.

You can't lead with the "crown" of the helmet, he is face forward (I can see the crown and his face gets buried in his chest). He also clearly did not "launch" him self either as you can see he is still taking steps after making contact.

 

[Prime Time]

Rhett is not Tom Brady by any stretch of the imagination. To whom much is given, much is required. Brady, as disgusting as it may be, is one of the symbols of the NFL brand. Don't know if Rhett ever owned up for what he did but Brady sure hasn't. Brady is also accused of having destroyed evidence. Then there's the whole thing about past cheating accusations against the Patriots and the chickens coming home to roost.
********************************************************************************************
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...s-punishment-why-not-the-same-as-for-stickum/

If Brady deserves punishment, why not the same as for Stickum?
Posted by Michael David Smith on May 24, 2016

Remember when Buccaneers running back Errict Rhett was caught violating league rules by tampering with equipment in an effort to give himself a better grip on the football? You probably don’t, because in that case the NFL didn’t launch a months-long, multimillion-dollar investigation that concluded with Rhett being suspended and the Buccaneers being stripped of draft picks. No, when Rhett was caught putting Stickum on his jersey, the NFL responded by fining him $5,000.

With that decision, the NFL established a clear precedent that when a player commits an equipment violation, there’s a policy in place: He gets fined, and that’s the end of it. So why, when the NFL found that Tom Brady was caught violating the rules by tampering with equipment in an effort to give himself a better grip on the football, did the league have such a drastically different reaction?

That’s a question Ted Olson, the former United States Solicitor General who’s now part of Brady’s legal team, would like to have answered. Olson appeared this morning on PFT Live and pointed out that the Collective Bargaining Agreement already provides for players to get fined if they break a rule related to equipment. If the NFL thinks Brady broke an equipment rule, the punishment should have been a fine, not a four-game suspension.

“There’s a provision in the Collective Bargaining Agreement with respect to equipment violations, and that’s what Brady is accused of,” Olson said. “We feel — and the evidence is very strong — that Tom Brady did not do anything wrong with respect to that. But if he did, and that’s what he’s accused of, those provisions are the appropriate provisions to apply. They call for a fine. . . . Instead, this very draconian punishment of a four-game suspension was imposed, instead of referring to the very provisions in the Agreement for people accused of violating the rules with respect to equipment. And the commissioner did not even discuss why he was not turning to that provision of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.”

It’s a strong argument on Brady’s side, one that the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit finds persuasive. And although NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wouldn’t say so, it’s easy to wonder whether, in hindsight, he had just put this whole thing behind him a year and a half ago by fining Brady and moving on.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/spo...ootballs-is-hardly-a-recent-trend-6031693.php

Tampering with footballs is hardly a recent trend
By Jerome Solomon
January 21, 2015

Long ago, the NFL determined that when it came to the footballs being used in games, kickers were cheating to such a degree that it wanted to put a stop to it.

From a John McClain column in the Chronicle (Oct. 30, 1994), before the '94 season the league sent a letter to teams warning of a possible $10,000 fine for anyone found to have doctored a football.

McClain quoted Minnesota special teams coach Gary Zauner with Step 1 of his recipe for cooking footballs:

"Preheat the oven to 250 degrees, bake for 10 minutes."

No one was punished; the doctoring continued.

So, in 1998, the league increased the fine to $25,000.

Kickers kept cheating.

So the next year the league decided to put someone at every game in charge of 12 footballs, K balls they are called, to be used only by the kickers. That ended the kickers' fun.

But the league left 12 balls with each teams for the quarterbacks to do with as they pleased. And, again, the fine for violating the rule was a $25,000 fine.

If the league didn't want quarterbacks to possibly continue doctoring footballs, why didn't it take their balls away too?

Because the league doesn't care.

I don't think anyone has ever been fined.

Here is some more fun stuff from what kickers were doing to doctor footballs before the new rule, with information from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Sports Illustrated:

Falcons' punter Dan Stryzinski said he used to pump balls to 20 pounds per square inch, or how much air it could stand (manufacturer recommends 13 psi), and let the over- inflated balls sit overnight to stretch the leather. The next morning he put the balls in a sauna for 15 minutes, then brushed them with a non-wire shoe brush.

Bears kicker Jeff Jaeger and punter Todd Sauerbrun over-inflated balls and left them sitting for three days. They then deflated the balls to eight pounds and pushed the ends into the corner of a table. They over- inflated them again, threw them into a laundry sack with wet towels and put them into a dryer.

"Ten minutes was all it would take to get them real hot," Sauerbrun said. "They'd bang around in the dryer, and then we'd brush them off."

If a ball needed more work, it would be deflated again and put under hot water.

When Sauerbrun was injured during the season, the Bears signed Mike Horan, who had graduated from Long Beach State with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Horan had a device made out of a skateboard and two-by-fours that he and Jaeger used to roll a 100- pound dumbbell over the balls.

All of this foolishness was going on and what did the league do?

It eventually took the balls away from the kickers and threatened to fine any cheater $25,000 grand.

Here's another tidbit: one reason the competition committee took control of the kicking footballs was because of quarterback complaints.

Some quarterbacks, Dallas' Troy Aikman for instance, liked the beat up balls. Others, like Denver's John Elway, didn't.

Then there's a New York Times story on how the Giants prepare footballs for Eli Manning, who falls in the former category.

So the league decided to allow quarterbacks to do whatever they wanted to the football until right before the referee inspected them before the game, but they banned kickers from doing anything.

Break the rule like someone who had access to New England's footballs did on Sunday, and you could get docked $25,000.

That's it.

So please, NFL fine somebody, or five somebodies $25,000 so we can get on to wasting time talking about the Super Bowl.

 

[dieterbrock]

Brady appealing again
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/s...new-hearing-in-the-deflategate-case.html?_r=0
Tom Brady’s lawyers asked a federal appeals court in New York for a new hearing before an expanded panel of judges, arguing on Monday that it was not just a silly dispute over underinflated footballs — it was the basic right to a fair process that was shared by all union workers.

Setting the stage for the Deflategate scandal to stretch into its third season, and putting Brady’s four-game suspension back in the hands of the courts, the players’ union asked the 13 judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to hear the case that a three-judge panel decided in the league’s favor.

In the appeal filed Monday, Brady’s lawyers said that Commissioner Roger Goodell’s “biased, agenda-driven and self-approving appeal ruling must be vacated.”

Brady was initially suspended four games in what Goodell said was an illegal scheme to use improperly inflated footballs in the 2015 A.F.C. championship game. The suspension was overturned by a federal judge on the eve of last season, but a circuit court panel ruled last month that Goodell was within the rights granted to him by the collective bargaining agreement.

 

[Wolfecola]

Hey NFL, make this a non issue and provide all of the footballs for future games. Thanks.

 

[DaveFan'51]

If Brady deserves punishment, why not the same as for Stickum?

Question^ Answer: Because in the Brady case, Brady "Destroyed evidence (The Phone) and Failed to cooperate with the investigation, as is required by League rules and The CBA!:banghead::deadhorse:

 

[kurtfaulk]

It's actually a textbook hit. I don't know what you're seeing.

Seriously? We were all crying when the same thing happened to foles on a hit by Matthews.

.

 

[Legatron4]

Seriously? We were all crying when the same thing happened to foles on a hit by Matthews.

.

It's not the same thing. Matthews launched and speared Foles in the chest. Dumervil had his head up looking at Brady when he hit him.

 

[Legatron4]

The Brady hit

View: http://youtu.be/58PrkjRQIdo


The Foles hit

View: http://youtu.be/oQ7juXqcRro

 

[Rynie]

And pats fans are making excuses and crying like little bitches.

 

[Prime Time]

"Let's see, I have to churn out another article today. What will I write about? Must stop with the man-love for Brady and the Patriots...oh I can't help myself...somebody stop me....." - Peter King

*************************************************************************
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/05/24/tom-brady-deflategate-nfl-appeal-court

Tom Brady’s Hail Mary
It’s a long shot, but the legal team for the Patriots QB filed one final brief in an attempt to avoid a four-game suspension. Brady’s lawyer explains the case.
by Peter King

I’ve read the legal brief from Tom Brady’s legal team, designed to get one final legal challenge of his four-game suspension heard in New York. I still think his chances of winning are equivalent to the Browns’ chances of winning a playoff game this year. But if Brady has a prayer of avoiding the suspension, I do believe his team has focused on the two smartest things to convince the Second Circuit roster of 13 judges to hear the appeal en banc—by the entire court—as it’s called.

One: The appeal by veteran high-profile attorney Ted Olson on Monday included a simple focus on the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement, which states that “uniform/equipment violations” have a first-offense fine of $5,787. Commissioner Roger Goodell bypassed this sanction when levying his four-game ban of Brady, because he exercised his power to pushing Brady for “conduct detrimental to the integrity of, or public confidence in, the game of professional football.”

Olson’s point: Goodell and the NFL Players Association bargained for the schedule of fines and sanctions in 2011, so the commissioner can’t take what he rules to be a first violation of an applicable rule and automatically turn that into conduct detrimental … and, I might add, especially considering Brady’s home and road performance. At home, home equipment personnel handle the footballs on the sidelines. On the road, the visitors have nothing to do with the football once they arrive at the stadium.

Yet Brady’s numbers over the past decade are virtually identical at home and on the road (identical plus-96 touchdown-to-interception differentials at home and on the road for games between 2006 and 2014).

“The penalty schedule [for the equipment violation] is precisely where the starting point of this should be, and where this should have ended up, if there was any evidence at all,” said a member of Brady’s team, attorney Drew Tulumello of the Washington-based firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, in a phone interview late Tuesday. “[Goodell] didn’t even discuss it. Arbitrators have some latitude, but you can’t make up the process after collectively bargaining it.”

Photo: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
If Brady indeed is suspended for the first four games, he’ll miss contests against the Cardinals, Dolphins, Texans and Bills.

Two: Olson wrote in his petition Monday that this case is not about Brady versus Goodell—but rather about “all unionized workers who have bargained for appeal rights.” In other words, Olson tried to make the point that this case must be about all laborers in the Second Circuit—which covers the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont.

“We want to give the court the opportunity to correct its mistake, and to bring the law into conformity with other circuits,” Tulumello said. “The en banc process was designed exactly for these circumstances, where they can be corrected. Our point is that this is about much more than Brady versus Goodell. This court has now laid down rules of labor law that fundamentally contradict rules applied by other courts. We don’t believe the Second Circuit will ignore it.”

But that would be in opposition to this court’s history. As the Boston Globereported, one-third of 1 percent of the Second Circuit’s cases in the en banc system were heard between 2000 and 2010. Thus, this is a Hail Mary of a legal brief. Beyond that, there’s a shot just as long: getting heard by the Supreme Court.

A few quick points that I wondered about in my conversation with Tulumello:

• Asked if there’s any chance Brady would settle the case if the NFL offered him, say, two games instead of four, Tulumello said it was “hypothetical” and wouldn’t answer.

• Asked if the union was going to further lengths for Brady than it would for other players, Tulumello said, “For as long as I’ve worked with the players association, it’s always about the principal, and standing up for players’ rights. You don’t know which cases will raise important issues. We defend the rights of all players.”

• Tulumello has worked closely with Brady on the case, and I asked him about Brady’s mindset, and his feeling as the case approaches its 18th month. “I probably should not get into that,” Tulumello said. “But he has been steadfast and extremely, extremely easy to work with. He could not be more courteous and helpful in trying to do the right thing.”

Expect there to be a wait of between four to six weeks before the Second Circuit rules whether it will hear the case. A failure there would lead the Brady team to the Supreme Court. Again, unlikely.

 

[dieterbrock]

I think the NFL ought to make these rule infractions have severe penalties.
For instance, they ought to make Tom Brady play for Cleveland for a season. That would teach him

 

[DaveFan'51]

And pats fans are making excuses and crying like little bitches.

"As they always do!!"

 

[DaveFan'51]

Expect there to be a wait of between four to six weeks before the Second Circuit rules whether it will hear the case. A failure there would lead the Brady team to the Supreme Court. Again, unlikely.

I don't see why the Second Circuit Court, or the Supreme Court for that matter, should take this long to refuse to hear the appeal!!uke:

 

[Prime Time]

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/...ah_he_stopped_fighting_deflategate_because_he

While several released clips already caught headlines from Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Tom Brady, there was still plenty of other noteworthy segments from the hour-long session with the Patriots quarterback, which aired Sunday on the OWN network.

There were questions about Deflategate and what it taught Brady, who was suspended the first four games of the 2016 season as a result of the ball-deflating scandal. Sitting with Brady in her backyard, she also asked if there was “something going on” with the Patriots quarterback and head coach Bill Belichick. The answers weren't hugely revealing, but noteworthy nonetheless.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIrKwoM0YvY