- Joined
- Feb 9, 2014
- Messages
- 20,922
- Name
- Peter
Nothing on the Rams today. These are only excerpts. To read the whole article click the link below.
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/08/02/nfl-training-camp-bruce-dehaven-cancer-carolina-panthers
*********************************************************************************
The Pride of the Panthers
With NFL training camps in full swing, a sobering story in Carolina reminds us what makes football so special in the first place. Plus, more from the road, including a look inside the Falcons' meeting room, RG3's last stand and the secret to ironman Ben Roethlisberger
by Peter King
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Here’s how football locker rooms have changed before our eyes, per Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan, who was a rookie in 2008:
“When I came into the league, guys would be playing cards in the locker room, and dominoes,” Ryan said on Sunday. “Now, they’re still playing cards … but it’s like, one guy’s sitting at his locker with his phone, and another guy’s at his locker with his phone, and they’re playing poker against each other. That’s the way they’re used to playing cards now.”
NFL camaraderie, 2015.
The story of the week, from the first week on the road in the 2015 preseason.
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — One of the best special-teams coaches in NFL history, Bruce DeHaven, had to ponder this spring one of the toughest choices a man could ever have.
Bruce DeHaven (Photo by John DePetro/The MMQB)
A doctor told him in May: It’s likely you have three to five years to live. And then he didn’t hear anything else. He didn’t hear the doc say there’s a slight chance you will live for decades, or a slight chance you will live for a few months. He just heard, at 66 and healthy as a mule (or so he thought), that the finish line of life might well be coming about 25 years sooner than he thought it would. In the next 10 days, DeHaven lost 11 pounds. From the shock of it. He didn’t have 11 to lose, but he lost them anyway.
It’s May. Mini-camps are approaching. The owner of the team, the venerable Jerry Richardson, tells DeHaven the team will support him in any way possible. If the prostate cancer spreads into your bones and makes it too tough to work, Richardson says we’ll get you the best care on the planet, wherever that is; if you want to work, we’ll get you the best care on the planet, wherever that is. Your call.
At home, DeHaven has a son about to go off to college, for his freshman year at Canisius, and a daughter still in high school. He thought about it. He thought about it for a long time. He did nothing but think about it.
Should I coach this team with a bunch of guys I love? Or should I go home and just be with the ones I love more, just in case the end is near?
How do you make that call?
Only the fans don’t know the man with the wide-brimmed white sun hat, which keeps the worst of the rays from damaging his fair skin on this typically oppressive 92-degree first day of August, hang-timing his punters while the rest of the team worked out on the adjacent field. No one’s really watching the punters. Hardly anyone ever does, except for the special-teams coach.
“Whoa!” DeHaven said on Saturday afternoon, watching incumbent Brad Nortman skyrocket a booming punt off the sweet spot of his right foot. Then he waits, and Nortman watches, until the ball falls to earth.
“Five-point-oh!” DeHaven called out with a wide grin. “A five-second hang time! On the first day we’re kicking, no less! Wow!”
Photo by John DePetro/The MMQB
So now you know: DeHaven chose to coach this season. He also chose, with Richardson’s approval and that of head coach Ron Rivera, to import one of his best friends in the coaching fraternity, retired NFL special-teams coach Russ Purnell, to help him during the season if his health takes a sudden turn.
“I just figured that I am determined to beat this,” said DeHaven. “And I hope I can beat it. I hope I can outlast it. I’m so busy that I don’t even think of it unless someone brings it up. But I think I figured that, if I quit, 20 years from now I’d ask myself, ‘Why’d you walk away from a job you love doing so much?’”
Before the afternoon practice, when DeHaven talked about his big decision, he tried to explain why he so desperately wanted to keep doing what he did for a 29th season in the NFL. He had coached under Hall of Fame coaches Marv Levy in Buffalo and Bill Parcells in Dallas, and under Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Holmgren in Seattle. But the bigness wasn’t the be-all of it. You could see that on a scorching day in training camp, as he kept the log of his punters.
“Look,” he said, “I love coaching. I just do. I love teaching football. There’s a story I need to tell you. I grew up in Kansas, a farm kid. And I got to be a high school coach, and in 1976, the team I coached in Wichita went to Kansas City and won the state championship. So we’re headed home to Wichita after the game on a yellow school bus, and everyone’s so happy, and I’m happy we won, of course. But part of me was so sad. The season’s over. I don’t get to coach these kids I love to coach on Monday. It’s over. So it’s the coaching, the teaching, the process. That’s what I love.
“From life on the farm to the NFL … I mean, are you kidding me? Coaching in the Super Bowl? With Hall of Fame coaches? Marv Levy, Bill Parcells. My gosh, I understand what Lou Gehrig said. I honestly feel it. I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
So as to whether DeHaven coaches or goes home … of course there is no right answer, because life gives you no guarantees. For now, DeHaven has his son, Toby, with him at camp. The two are spending time together before the young and exceedingly polite man leaves for college later this month, and his father is introducing him to everyone they meet during, before and after practice and meetings. On Saturday, most everywhere DeHaven went, he went with a smile.
After practice, Carolina safety Colin Jones, one of DeHaven’s core special-teamers, considered his coach’s decision this spring. He got very serious. Solemn. “We didn’t have a very good year on special teams last year,” Jones said, “and Bruce knew that. He absolutely would not accept it. He was positive with us, and he had passion every day. But he is not afraid to tell us the truth. I made a mistake in a game last year, and I knew it, and the team knew it. He called me out in front of the team—and that was good, because we all have to be accountable.
“Then, when we heard about what his situation was this spring, to hear he wanted to be with us, to hear he wanted to be our coach at this point in his life. I don’t know what to say, really. But it is the best. Just the best.”
“When I first was getting to know Bruce,” Cam Newton said, “I said to him, ‘Hey coach, you want to get a big raise?’ He said, ‘Sure, we all like money.’ I said, ‘Put me at punt return!’ We both laughed. He says to me I should be ready; you never know what might happen some day.”
Newton considered DeHaven’s decision to coach one more season, at least, and was asked whether it said anything about what he felt about the players on this team.
“It’s not saying he loves coaching us,” Newton said. “It’s screaming it. That’s the kind of passion coach has for this team.”
DeHaven got his NFL start with the great Levy Bills teams, helping develop gunner/punt-blocker/kick-blocker Steve Tasker into the man who is often considered the best special-teams player in NFL history. “A fine man, a terrific coach, and a fabulous tactician,” former Bills GM Bill Polian said. “He comes into the league under the best special-teams mind in the game, Marv Levy, and puts his own stamp on special-teams coaching, and he helps Steve become the best special-teamer ever.”
“I gave him a game ball in the locker room once,” said Tasker. “I have to think that’s pretty rare. I forget the exact game, but we made so many plays on special teams. It was almost like it was unfair, we were so much better and so much better-prepared than the opponent that day. But that’s what Bruce did, every week. And for me, he was steadfast he wanted me to be the point of his spear. He saw something in my psyche that maybe other coaches hadn’t seen. Without him, there is no way we’d have had the success we had.”
Through the years, others felt the way Tasker felt, and the way Colin Jones felt. In 2001, DeHaven was coaching the San Francisco special teams when a young coach from Hofstra came in the office one day to interview for an entry-level job on the defensive staff. The kid was sweating profusely, nervous. Good résumé, but you never know how these things go. But the head coach, Steve Mariucci, liked the kid’s enthusiasm.
Dan Quinn was hired.
On Sunday, Quinn, the rookie head coach in Atlanta, recalled the moment. “So I get the job,” he said, “and the next day, Bruce, who doesn’t even really know me, comes up to me with the USA Today sports section. He shows me the ‘Transactions’ column. He says to me, ‘You better save this. This is a big deal for a kid from Hofstra, being in transactions, getting a job in the NFL.’ That’s the kind of guy Bruce is.”
“How about that?” DeHaven said. “What a great guy Dan is. I’m still doing this, and guys who just started in the middle of my career are getting head-coaching jobs. Isn’t that something?”
Over the past few weeks, scores of men in the coaching fraternity have reached out to DeHaven. Bill Belichick called. Asshole Face sent a picture of the Saints’ staff, with well-wishes from all. “Heartwarming,” DeHaven said, shaking his head. “Asshole Face, with a division rival, reaching out. Just shows you what the fraternity of coaches is like. We compete, but we’re together.”
DeHaven is undergoing hormone treatments now, hoping to stop the spread of the disease and treat it as well. He feels good. He uses the elliptical machine every morning. He looks very good. He gets around the practice field as good as any 66-year-old man has a right to.
“My problems are down the road, not right now,” he said. “There’s no telling how cancer progresses, and everyone’s immune system handles it differently. I plan on being here for a long time. I plan on something else killing me, way down the road. But whatever happens, I have had a great life.”
--------------------
Brady vs. Goodell, still.
The affirmation of Tom Brady’s four-game suspension by the NFL leaves these issues in the wake:
1. Both sides want a resolution by opening day. With the presiding judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, ordering that Brady and commissioner Roger Goodell be available to appear at pre-trial conferences in New York on Aug. 12 and 19, it’s clear that he, and both sides, will push to resolve this by the Sept. 10 league opener. Berman asked the attorneys to push for a resolution before Aug. 12, but both Goodell and attorneys for Brady feel their cases are solid, so don’t look for any concessions in the next nine days.
2. Good for the Patriots, publishing some emails to the league last winter, asking the league to clamp down on the leaks to ESPN (at least one patently false) and getting nothing in return. I find it alarming that the league has never acknowledged that the letter informing the Patriots of the official investigation the day after the AFC title game had a major fact error that was never corrected. The letter from NFL vice president David Gardi said that one of the Patriots’ footballs examined by the league at halftime of the game “was inflated to 10.1 psi, far below the requirement of 12-1/2 to 13-1⁄2 psi. In contrast, each of the Colts’ game balls that was inspected met the requirements set forth above.” Huge errors.
The Ted Wells Report confirmed that no football measured as low as 10.1 of the Patriots’ balls. Gardi said the Colts’ balls measured within the range required. The Wells Reports said three of them were under the minimum of 12.5 psi. Never corrected. Why? Similarly, when ESPN reported that 10 New England balls were at least two pounds under the limit measured at halftime, the league never corrected that error. What is most damaging about this is that these impressions were left as facts, particularly the ESPN claim, for a long period, allowing the public to be convinced the Patriots were guilty. Maybe that will turn out to be true, but this evidence wasn’t factual.
3. I can tell you that smart and influential executives are fed up with this story—fed up that it has bled into the 2015 season, and fed up that the league bungled some of the very basic elements, such as the Gardi letter. I’ve asked a few high-ranking team people in the past few days an open-ended question, with the proviso I wouldn’t use names. The clear sentiment: Teams think league officials are running scared after the Ray Rice verdict backfired on the NFL. Two thought it was ridiculous how long the Wells report took to finish, one saying if the league is going to hire an outside firm to investigate a case, there has to be a deadline. “Why are we fighting this fight now?” one top team executive said. “We should be getting ready for a new season, but we’ve got our biggest star firing bombs at the league and the league firing back, a month before the season starts. It’s ridiculous. The headlines aren’t football. They’re about a scandal that’s eight months old.” (Not quite eight, but you get the picture.)
4. It would behoove the NFL, as much as Brady, to get this matter over now. There is a nuclear-winter scenario. I’ve mentioned it before. But follow me here. The NFL has laid out a plan to spot-check footballs during the course of the season. What happens if, say, the footballs in a northern city on a day when it’s 40 degrees outside lose 1.0 to 1.5 psi between the pre-game measurement and the halftime measurement? (Which, apparently, science would support.) That’s nearly what happened to the Patriots’ football that January day in Foxboro. If the NFL’s examination of footballs in 2015 shows that kind of deflation, naturally, the whole case should be thrown out. But by then, Brady might have already served his four games. This would be the ultimate nightmare for the league, and for Goodell. Of course, if the balls don’t deflate much at all, the league will be able to say it had it right.
5. I don’t know who will prevail in this case, but the NFL has some major, major holes here. Any judge looking at the evidence is going to be suspicious of the circumstantial evidence around Brady. But there’s a good chance he’d be as suspicious of the things the NFL took as fact here. This is important: Officials used two gauges at halftime of the AFC Championship Game to measure air pressure in 11 New England footballs and four Indianapolis footballs. On page 113 of the Wells report, Wells says that the Patriots footballs would have been justified to have measured between 11.32 psi and 11.52 psi at halftime.
The average of one gauge for the 11 balls was 11.49 psi, on the upper range of what the balls should have measured. The average of the other gauge was 11.11 psi, clearly lower than what the balls should have measured. Average all 22 readings, and you get 11.30 … two-one-hundredths lower than what the Ideal Gas Law would have allowed for balls that started the day at 12.5 psi. It is crazy to me, and just wrong, that the NFL issued a historic sanction when the inflation level of the football is so close to what science says it should be.
I know you’re sick of reading about this. I’m sick of writing about it. But this case has important learning signposts for future discipline cases, and the NFL cannot be blind to them. Time limits, precision and being convinced of guilt. Those would be three pretty good signposts to live by going forward.
----------
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. I think the smartest thing the Broncos can do—and, apparently, are doing—would be to take some of the offensive pressure off quarterback Peyton Manning, and shorten the game by playing more clockball on offense. They should be running more. And Manning, who has averaged 613 passes a season in his three Denver seasons, wore down late last year. “The running game will be Peyton’s best friend,” Denver GM John Elway said the other day.
In addition, coach GaryKubiak will mandate that Manning not throw as much in training camp and not take as many of the first-team reps, ceding some to the most invisible backup in football, Brock Osweiler. I’m hearing Elway is still very bullish on Osweiler, and it makes no sense to not see what they have in him, especially with Manning eight months shy of his 40th birthday and a veteran of four neck procedures. Smart move by the Broncos.
2. I think Marvin Lewis sure is bold these days. He told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “I want to hand (club owner Mike Brown) the Lombardi Trophy, then walk away.” Lewis’ career playoff record: 0-6. That’s a man with some confidence in himself.
3. I think in a league of silly sanctions, I’d be most furious about this one if I were a player: If you toss a football in the stands to a fan, or toss it into the stands out of celebration, you get fined $5,787.
4. I think if Michael Gehlken’s report in U-T San Diegois correct—that the Chargers have 10 days to reach agreement with Philip Rivers on a new contract or they’ll put it off till after the season—it is an important one. Remember that Rivers doesn’t want to tie himself to a team when he doesn’t know where the team will be playing one to three years down the road. So if the Chargers can get a deal done now, it would eliminate the distraction of the contract through an important period for the Bolts.
5. I think the NFL cannot be happy about the turf condition at the site of Super Bowl 50. The grass at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara has been a constant worry since they started playing there 12 months ago. After a high school all-star game there on Saturday, it was a mess. “Looked like American Pharoah and company raced there this afternoon,” said Matt Barrows of the Sacramento Bee. With the Niners slated to have eight straight practices in the stadium, it’ll be a good test to see if the field can stand up to consistent punishment, but it sounds like the sod is flunking the test already.
6. I think Sydney Seau was going to be interviewed after Junior Seau’s bust was unveiled at the Hall of Fame next week anyway. Not sure any major adjustments have been made in the program to accommodate the hue and cry that she be allowed to make a speech.
7. I think it strikes me that six games is a fortunate break for Aaron Kromer. In other words, the Buffalo offensive line coach is lucky to have gotten a six-game unpaid ban by the Bills as a punishment for an altercation with three boys over beach chairs in Florida last month.
8. I think I love the fact that DallasCowboys.com posted the video and comments from both players, wideout Dez Bryant and cornerback Tyler Patmon, on the website Sunday evening, after a pretty good camp fight at Cowboys camp in California. Two thoughts: Why stick your head in the sand, as a team website, if every other site with a reporter and/or camera on-site is going to report fully about it? And the Cowboys are competing with those sites. Why should the other sites get the traffic and the Cowboys not? For team websites to succeed, consumers have to know the teams are not going to censor anything that isn’t puffy or positive news.
9. I think it was a fun exercise to imagine what would be different about the NFL if the 2012 draft's top two picks were flipped: Robert Griffin III to the Colts, and Andrew Luck to Washington.
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/08/02/nfl-training-camp-bruce-dehaven-cancer-carolina-panthers
*********************************************************************************
The Pride of the Panthers
With NFL training camps in full swing, a sobering story in Carolina reminds us what makes football so special in the first place. Plus, more from the road, including a look inside the Falcons' meeting room, RG3's last stand and the secret to ironman Ben Roethlisberger
by Peter King
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Here’s how football locker rooms have changed before our eyes, per Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan, who was a rookie in 2008:
“When I came into the league, guys would be playing cards in the locker room, and dominoes,” Ryan said on Sunday. “Now, they’re still playing cards … but it’s like, one guy’s sitting at his locker with his phone, and another guy’s at his locker with his phone, and they’re playing poker against each other. That’s the way they’re used to playing cards now.”
NFL camaraderie, 2015.
The story of the week, from the first week on the road in the 2015 preseason.
SPARTANBURG, S.C. — One of the best special-teams coaches in NFL history, Bruce DeHaven, had to ponder this spring one of the toughest choices a man could ever have.
Bruce DeHaven (Photo by John DePetro/The MMQB)
A doctor told him in May: It’s likely you have three to five years to live. And then he didn’t hear anything else. He didn’t hear the doc say there’s a slight chance you will live for decades, or a slight chance you will live for a few months. He just heard, at 66 and healthy as a mule (or so he thought), that the finish line of life might well be coming about 25 years sooner than he thought it would. In the next 10 days, DeHaven lost 11 pounds. From the shock of it. He didn’t have 11 to lose, but he lost them anyway.
It’s May. Mini-camps are approaching. The owner of the team, the venerable Jerry Richardson, tells DeHaven the team will support him in any way possible. If the prostate cancer spreads into your bones and makes it too tough to work, Richardson says we’ll get you the best care on the planet, wherever that is; if you want to work, we’ll get you the best care on the planet, wherever that is. Your call.
At home, DeHaven has a son about to go off to college, for his freshman year at Canisius, and a daughter still in high school. He thought about it. He thought about it for a long time. He did nothing but think about it.
Should I coach this team with a bunch of guys I love? Or should I go home and just be with the ones I love more, just in case the end is near?
How do you make that call?
Only the fans don’t know the man with the wide-brimmed white sun hat, which keeps the worst of the rays from damaging his fair skin on this typically oppressive 92-degree first day of August, hang-timing his punters while the rest of the team worked out on the adjacent field. No one’s really watching the punters. Hardly anyone ever does, except for the special-teams coach.
“Whoa!” DeHaven said on Saturday afternoon, watching incumbent Brad Nortman skyrocket a booming punt off the sweet spot of his right foot. Then he waits, and Nortman watches, until the ball falls to earth.
“Five-point-oh!” DeHaven called out with a wide grin. “A five-second hang time! On the first day we’re kicking, no less! Wow!”
Photo by John DePetro/The MMQB
So now you know: DeHaven chose to coach this season. He also chose, with Richardson’s approval and that of head coach Ron Rivera, to import one of his best friends in the coaching fraternity, retired NFL special-teams coach Russ Purnell, to help him during the season if his health takes a sudden turn.
“I just figured that I am determined to beat this,” said DeHaven. “And I hope I can beat it. I hope I can outlast it. I’m so busy that I don’t even think of it unless someone brings it up. But I think I figured that, if I quit, 20 years from now I’d ask myself, ‘Why’d you walk away from a job you love doing so much?’”
Before the afternoon practice, when DeHaven talked about his big decision, he tried to explain why he so desperately wanted to keep doing what he did for a 29th season in the NFL. He had coached under Hall of Fame coaches Marv Levy in Buffalo and Bill Parcells in Dallas, and under Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Holmgren in Seattle. But the bigness wasn’t the be-all of it. You could see that on a scorching day in training camp, as he kept the log of his punters.
“Look,” he said, “I love coaching. I just do. I love teaching football. There’s a story I need to tell you. I grew up in Kansas, a farm kid. And I got to be a high school coach, and in 1976, the team I coached in Wichita went to Kansas City and won the state championship. So we’re headed home to Wichita after the game on a yellow school bus, and everyone’s so happy, and I’m happy we won, of course. But part of me was so sad. The season’s over. I don’t get to coach these kids I love to coach on Monday. It’s over. So it’s the coaching, the teaching, the process. That’s what I love.
“From life on the farm to the NFL … I mean, are you kidding me? Coaching in the Super Bowl? With Hall of Fame coaches? Marv Levy, Bill Parcells. My gosh, I understand what Lou Gehrig said. I honestly feel it. I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
So as to whether DeHaven coaches or goes home … of course there is no right answer, because life gives you no guarantees. For now, DeHaven has his son, Toby, with him at camp. The two are spending time together before the young and exceedingly polite man leaves for college later this month, and his father is introducing him to everyone they meet during, before and after practice and meetings. On Saturday, most everywhere DeHaven went, he went with a smile.
After practice, Carolina safety Colin Jones, one of DeHaven’s core special-teamers, considered his coach’s decision this spring. He got very serious. Solemn. “We didn’t have a very good year on special teams last year,” Jones said, “and Bruce knew that. He absolutely would not accept it. He was positive with us, and he had passion every day. But he is not afraid to tell us the truth. I made a mistake in a game last year, and I knew it, and the team knew it. He called me out in front of the team—and that was good, because we all have to be accountable.
“Then, when we heard about what his situation was this spring, to hear he wanted to be with us, to hear he wanted to be our coach at this point in his life. I don’t know what to say, really. But it is the best. Just the best.”
“When I first was getting to know Bruce,” Cam Newton said, “I said to him, ‘Hey coach, you want to get a big raise?’ He said, ‘Sure, we all like money.’ I said, ‘Put me at punt return!’ We both laughed. He says to me I should be ready; you never know what might happen some day.”
Newton considered DeHaven’s decision to coach one more season, at least, and was asked whether it said anything about what he felt about the players on this team.
“It’s not saying he loves coaching us,” Newton said. “It’s screaming it. That’s the kind of passion coach has for this team.”
DeHaven got his NFL start with the great Levy Bills teams, helping develop gunner/punt-blocker/kick-blocker Steve Tasker into the man who is often considered the best special-teams player in NFL history. “A fine man, a terrific coach, and a fabulous tactician,” former Bills GM Bill Polian said. “He comes into the league under the best special-teams mind in the game, Marv Levy, and puts his own stamp on special-teams coaching, and he helps Steve become the best special-teamer ever.”
“I gave him a game ball in the locker room once,” said Tasker. “I have to think that’s pretty rare. I forget the exact game, but we made so many plays on special teams. It was almost like it was unfair, we were so much better and so much better-prepared than the opponent that day. But that’s what Bruce did, every week. And for me, he was steadfast he wanted me to be the point of his spear. He saw something in my psyche that maybe other coaches hadn’t seen. Without him, there is no way we’d have had the success we had.”
Through the years, others felt the way Tasker felt, and the way Colin Jones felt. In 2001, DeHaven was coaching the San Francisco special teams when a young coach from Hofstra came in the office one day to interview for an entry-level job on the defensive staff. The kid was sweating profusely, nervous. Good résumé, but you never know how these things go. But the head coach, Steve Mariucci, liked the kid’s enthusiasm.
Dan Quinn was hired.
On Sunday, Quinn, the rookie head coach in Atlanta, recalled the moment. “So I get the job,” he said, “and the next day, Bruce, who doesn’t even really know me, comes up to me with the USA Today sports section. He shows me the ‘Transactions’ column. He says to me, ‘You better save this. This is a big deal for a kid from Hofstra, being in transactions, getting a job in the NFL.’ That’s the kind of guy Bruce is.”
“How about that?” DeHaven said. “What a great guy Dan is. I’m still doing this, and guys who just started in the middle of my career are getting head-coaching jobs. Isn’t that something?”
Over the past few weeks, scores of men in the coaching fraternity have reached out to DeHaven. Bill Belichick called. Asshole Face sent a picture of the Saints’ staff, with well-wishes from all. “Heartwarming,” DeHaven said, shaking his head. “Asshole Face, with a division rival, reaching out. Just shows you what the fraternity of coaches is like. We compete, but we’re together.”
DeHaven is undergoing hormone treatments now, hoping to stop the spread of the disease and treat it as well. He feels good. He uses the elliptical machine every morning. He looks very good. He gets around the practice field as good as any 66-year-old man has a right to.
“My problems are down the road, not right now,” he said. “There’s no telling how cancer progresses, and everyone’s immune system handles it differently. I plan on being here for a long time. I plan on something else killing me, way down the road. But whatever happens, I have had a great life.”
--------------------
Brady vs. Goodell, still.
The affirmation of Tom Brady’s four-game suspension by the NFL leaves these issues in the wake:
1. Both sides want a resolution by opening day. With the presiding judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, ordering that Brady and commissioner Roger Goodell be available to appear at pre-trial conferences in New York on Aug. 12 and 19, it’s clear that he, and both sides, will push to resolve this by the Sept. 10 league opener. Berman asked the attorneys to push for a resolution before Aug. 12, but both Goodell and attorneys for Brady feel their cases are solid, so don’t look for any concessions in the next nine days.
2. Good for the Patriots, publishing some emails to the league last winter, asking the league to clamp down on the leaks to ESPN (at least one patently false) and getting nothing in return. I find it alarming that the league has never acknowledged that the letter informing the Patriots of the official investigation the day after the AFC title game had a major fact error that was never corrected. The letter from NFL vice president David Gardi said that one of the Patriots’ footballs examined by the league at halftime of the game “was inflated to 10.1 psi, far below the requirement of 12-1/2 to 13-1⁄2 psi. In contrast, each of the Colts’ game balls that was inspected met the requirements set forth above.” Huge errors.
The Ted Wells Report confirmed that no football measured as low as 10.1 of the Patriots’ balls. Gardi said the Colts’ balls measured within the range required. The Wells Reports said three of them were under the minimum of 12.5 psi. Never corrected. Why? Similarly, when ESPN reported that 10 New England balls were at least two pounds under the limit measured at halftime, the league never corrected that error. What is most damaging about this is that these impressions were left as facts, particularly the ESPN claim, for a long period, allowing the public to be convinced the Patriots were guilty. Maybe that will turn out to be true, but this evidence wasn’t factual.
3. I can tell you that smart and influential executives are fed up with this story—fed up that it has bled into the 2015 season, and fed up that the league bungled some of the very basic elements, such as the Gardi letter. I’ve asked a few high-ranking team people in the past few days an open-ended question, with the proviso I wouldn’t use names. The clear sentiment: Teams think league officials are running scared after the Ray Rice verdict backfired on the NFL. Two thought it was ridiculous how long the Wells report took to finish, one saying if the league is going to hire an outside firm to investigate a case, there has to be a deadline. “Why are we fighting this fight now?” one top team executive said. “We should be getting ready for a new season, but we’ve got our biggest star firing bombs at the league and the league firing back, a month before the season starts. It’s ridiculous. The headlines aren’t football. They’re about a scandal that’s eight months old.” (Not quite eight, but you get the picture.)
4. It would behoove the NFL, as much as Brady, to get this matter over now. There is a nuclear-winter scenario. I’ve mentioned it before. But follow me here. The NFL has laid out a plan to spot-check footballs during the course of the season. What happens if, say, the footballs in a northern city on a day when it’s 40 degrees outside lose 1.0 to 1.5 psi between the pre-game measurement and the halftime measurement? (Which, apparently, science would support.) That’s nearly what happened to the Patriots’ football that January day in Foxboro. If the NFL’s examination of footballs in 2015 shows that kind of deflation, naturally, the whole case should be thrown out. But by then, Brady might have already served his four games. This would be the ultimate nightmare for the league, and for Goodell. Of course, if the balls don’t deflate much at all, the league will be able to say it had it right.
5. I don’t know who will prevail in this case, but the NFL has some major, major holes here. Any judge looking at the evidence is going to be suspicious of the circumstantial evidence around Brady. But there’s a good chance he’d be as suspicious of the things the NFL took as fact here. This is important: Officials used two gauges at halftime of the AFC Championship Game to measure air pressure in 11 New England footballs and four Indianapolis footballs. On page 113 of the Wells report, Wells says that the Patriots footballs would have been justified to have measured between 11.32 psi and 11.52 psi at halftime.
The average of one gauge for the 11 balls was 11.49 psi, on the upper range of what the balls should have measured. The average of the other gauge was 11.11 psi, clearly lower than what the balls should have measured. Average all 22 readings, and you get 11.30 … two-one-hundredths lower than what the Ideal Gas Law would have allowed for balls that started the day at 12.5 psi. It is crazy to me, and just wrong, that the NFL issued a historic sanction when the inflation level of the football is so close to what science says it should be.
I know you’re sick of reading about this. I’m sick of writing about it. But this case has important learning signposts for future discipline cases, and the NFL cannot be blind to them. Time limits, precision and being convinced of guilt. Those would be three pretty good signposts to live by going forward.
----------
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. I think the smartest thing the Broncos can do—and, apparently, are doing—would be to take some of the offensive pressure off quarterback Peyton Manning, and shorten the game by playing more clockball on offense. They should be running more. And Manning, who has averaged 613 passes a season in his three Denver seasons, wore down late last year. “The running game will be Peyton’s best friend,” Denver GM John Elway said the other day.
In addition, coach GaryKubiak will mandate that Manning not throw as much in training camp and not take as many of the first-team reps, ceding some to the most invisible backup in football, Brock Osweiler. I’m hearing Elway is still very bullish on Osweiler, and it makes no sense to not see what they have in him, especially with Manning eight months shy of his 40th birthday and a veteran of four neck procedures. Smart move by the Broncos.
2. I think Marvin Lewis sure is bold these days. He told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “I want to hand (club owner Mike Brown) the Lombardi Trophy, then walk away.” Lewis’ career playoff record: 0-6. That’s a man with some confidence in himself.
3. I think in a league of silly sanctions, I’d be most furious about this one if I were a player: If you toss a football in the stands to a fan, or toss it into the stands out of celebration, you get fined $5,787.
4. I think if Michael Gehlken’s report in U-T San Diegois correct—that the Chargers have 10 days to reach agreement with Philip Rivers on a new contract or they’ll put it off till after the season—it is an important one. Remember that Rivers doesn’t want to tie himself to a team when he doesn’t know where the team will be playing one to three years down the road. So if the Chargers can get a deal done now, it would eliminate the distraction of the contract through an important period for the Bolts.
5. I think the NFL cannot be happy about the turf condition at the site of Super Bowl 50. The grass at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara has been a constant worry since they started playing there 12 months ago. After a high school all-star game there on Saturday, it was a mess. “Looked like American Pharoah and company raced there this afternoon,” said Matt Barrows of the Sacramento Bee. With the Niners slated to have eight straight practices in the stadium, it’ll be a good test to see if the field can stand up to consistent punishment, but it sounds like the sod is flunking the test already.
6. I think Sydney Seau was going to be interviewed after Junior Seau’s bust was unveiled at the Hall of Fame next week anyway. Not sure any major adjustments have been made in the program to accommodate the hue and cry that she be allowed to make a speech.
7. I think it strikes me that six games is a fortunate break for Aaron Kromer. In other words, the Buffalo offensive line coach is lucky to have gotten a six-game unpaid ban by the Bills as a punishment for an altercation with three boys over beach chairs in Florida last month.
8. I think I love the fact that DallasCowboys.com posted the video and comments from both players, wideout Dez Bryant and cornerback Tyler Patmon, on the website Sunday evening, after a pretty good camp fight at Cowboys camp in California. Two thoughts: Why stick your head in the sand, as a team website, if every other site with a reporter and/or camera on-site is going to report fully about it? And the Cowboys are competing with those sites. Why should the other sites get the traffic and the Cowboys not? For team websites to succeed, consumers have to know the teams are not going to censor anything that isn’t puffy or positive news.
9. I think it was a fun exercise to imagine what would be different about the NFL if the 2012 draft's top two picks were flipped: Robert Griffin III to the Colts, and Andrew Luck to Washington.
