Tom Brady suspended 4 games

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How long will Tom Brady be suspended?

  • 2 games

    Votes: 21 14.7%
  • 4 games

    Votes: 48 33.6%
  • 6 games

    Votes: 8 5.6%
  • 8 games

    Votes: 13 9.1%
  • The whole season

    Votes: 6 4.2%
  • Who are you kidding? He won't be suspended at all

    Votes: 47 32.9%

  • Total voters
    143

Dodgersrf

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the refs hadn't noticed or didn't care that the cheats had been using deflated balls for 7 years. what makes anyone think things will change?

.
I think the league's hand has been forced on this issue.
That doesn't mean the Pats won't continue to cheat, but at least the balls they use should be correct.
 

Prime Time

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http://mmqb.si.com/2015/05/14/deflategate-jimmy-garoppolo-tom-brady-suspension/

jimmy-garoppolo-jwm.jpg

John W. McDonough/Sports Illustrated/The MMQB

Can Jimmy Garoppolo Handle the Heat?
With Tom Brady suspended (for now) for the first four games, a 2014 second-round pick out of Eastern Illinois will lead the Super Bowl champions into the 2015 season. Who the heck is this guy?
By Robert Klemko

While most of the country reacted to Tom Brady’s suspension with applause, guffaws or rage depending on the viewpoint, pockets of the Midwest loyal to Jimmy Garoppolo, pride of Eastern Illinois University, quietly rejoiced. If Brady’s four-game suspension holds, and even if it’s reduced, Brady’s second-year backup will get a shot to justify the second-round draft choice Patriots coach Bill Belichick spent on him in 2014.

The situation is unrivaled in the game’s short history—a former I-AA quarterback without a start to his name, filling in for a banned all-time great in a season opener. “There’s no precedent for this,” says Roy Wittke, the former EIU offensive coordinator who recruited both Garoppolo and Tony Romo to the school, “but I believe in him and his work ethic, and I believe in that organization’s ability to support him.”

A key component of that support will likely include the 6-2, 226-pound Garoppolo getting the lion’s share of practice reps over a three-time Super Bowl MVP who is accustomed to being the only show in town. If it’s true, as ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported in Week 5 last year, that there was friction between Brady and the Patriots staff concerning his future with the club, the new dynamic this year brought on by Brady’s own malfeasance won’t help. There’s a potential for tension that no one could have imagined when the Patriots made the insurance-policy selection of Garoppolo 12 months ago.

Belichick has a delicate choice to make: Just how much work will an inactive Brady get as he enters his 16th season? In the past the coach has afforded backup quarterbacks minimal practice reps in a league that has curtailed offseason practices under the terms of the 2011 CBA. Said one former Patriots offensive player: “In the offseason, two-a-days are gone. Backups have to keep themselves ready by practicing on the scout team. But in season, backups would rarely get reps. Like, rarely.”

It bears repeating: We’re in uncharted waters.

Here’s a look at the mountainous challenge in front of Garoppolo, the 23-year-old from Arlington Heights, Ill.

  • Garoppolo, who didn’t have a playbook in college, is now charged with commanding one of the most complex systems in football, heavy with option routes. “There’s not much simplifying,” Garoppolo said last year. “You gotta know what you gotta know.”
  • He has little game experience—27 regular season passes with 182 yards and a touchdown.
  • He’ll play behind an offensive line that in 2014 relied heavily on the 37-year-old Brady’s quick release to appear competent, allowing only 21 sacks while grading out as the fourth-worst pass blocking unit in football by Pro Football Focus. (Brady was the league’s fourth-fastest passer from snap to attempt.)
  • He faces the Steelers (11-5 in 2014) in a pressure packed Thursday night opener, then division-challenger Buffalo, Jacksonville, and finally Dallas (12-4 in 2014).
So what experience will Garoppolo draw from as he prepares for the professional challenge of a lifetime? The last time Jimmy was thrown into the fire he was an 18-year-old freshman on an 0-3 team fresh off a conference title. Garoppolo beat out a JUCO transfer sophomore for a Sept. 25, 2010, home start vs. Jacksonville State at Eastern Illinois’s 10,000-seat stadium in Charleston, Ill. (It’s a far cry from Thursday night at Foxboro, but it will have to do).

“At that point we were not doing so well,” says former EIU coach Bob Spoo, now retired, “and we could see the potential in Jimmy, so we started him. He had a remarkable quick release. That’s what he had that the others did not—that was the deciding factor.”

The two-star pocket passer with offers from Illinois State and Montana State struggled early, tossing a second quarter interception against the Ohio Valley Conference favorites. And the woes continued throughout a 2-9 season.

Coaches stuck with him, refusing to burn the redshirt year for nothing, and he finished that first year with 14 touchdowns and 13 INTs. “He was a reps guy,” Wittke says. “He needed reps in practice. He was a guy who was going to benefit by playing. For fear of sounding disrespectful to him, some guys can see things from an abstract standpoint, but he does better when he sees things on the field. That was just my experience with him, but that was four or five years ago.”

“He made some good plays, but we were not a very good football team and we did not have a good cast around him. It was a tough situation to put a freshman in, but he showed poise and didn’t panic.”

Coaches finally saw the light flip on halfway through Garoppolo’s sophomore season. He went on to start all four years, improving incrementally and peaking with 53 touchdowns and nine interceptions as a senior. But instead of four years, he’ll have four weeks to prove his salt in the NFL.

If it works out, and Brady returns to a .500-or-better club, Belichick looks smart for spending the 62nd pick of the 2014 draft on a quarterback. If Garoppolo struggles, and the Patriots go, say, 1-3, it would be the second time Brady took a losing record into the Patriots’ fifth game. (The first time, in 2001, he led New England to a Super Bowl XXXVI victory).

Those who know Garoppolo are optimistic that it won’t come to that.

“In college, he took things in stride,” Wittke says, “didn’t show a lot of emotion, wasn’t a guy who would come off the field and throw his helmet. He had a great sense of calm. This will be a hell of a lot bigger stage, but he’s grown and he’ll handle it.”

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/05/14/poll-finds-most-fans-support-nfl-suspending-brady/

Poll finds most fans support NFL suspending Brady
Posted by Michael David Smith on May 14, 2015

76a10d5b5f7dfab7c825ed8b2be0b973-e1411396933631.jpeg
AP

Most fans think the NFL made the right call in suspending Tom Brady.

That’s the result of an ABC News/ESPN poll, which found that 63 percent of all fans and 76 percent of self-described “avid” fans supported the NFL’s decision to suspend Brady for four games and strip draft picks from the Patriots for Deflategate.

The poll also found that a majority of fans say that Brady and the Patriots cheated, although the vast majority of fans think other teams cheat, too. In fact, only 6 percent of fans think cheating is limited to the Patriots.

If there’s any good news in the poll for Brady, it’s that his reputation doesn’t appear to be irreparably damaged: A slim majority still view Brady as a good role model, and the vast majority still think Brady should be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame some day.

Perhaps when that day comes, we’ll think more about the Super Bowl rings than about Deflategate. Even if right now, Deflategate overshadows Brady’s other accomplishments.
 

Ramsey

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I just got a text from Ewe my sister. She composed a short Deflate Gate poem.

Whether the weather be cold,
or whether the weather be hot,
Whatever the weather, Brady cheated
Whether Patriot fans like it or not!:cry:
 

CodeMonkey

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...a majority of fans say that Brady and the Patriots cheated...A slim majority still view Brady as a good role model.

Now this is interesting. So, some people accept that he is a cheater but still consider him a good role model anyway (rationalized here with the old everybody cheats mantra). People are demented.

...and the vast majority still think Brady should be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame some day. Perhaps when that day comes, we’ll think more about the Super Bowl rings than about Deflategate. Even if right now, Deflategate overshadows Brady’s other accomplishments.

Who the hell is this WE?
 

Prime Time

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I just got a text from Ewe my sister. She composed a short Deflate Gate poem.

Whether the weather be cold,
or whether the weather be hot,
Whatever the weather, Brady cheated
Whether Patriot fans like it or not!:cry:

I miss Ewe.

Who the hell is this WE?

Maybe he has a mouse in his pocket.

My guess is that Brady, Belichick, and others of that ilk truly believe there's a difference between cheating and bending the rules as far as they can in order to win. This would explain why Tom Brady, when asked if he considers himself to be a cheater, replied "I don't think so."
 

CodeMonkey

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I don't think so. Ha Ha Ha. Never underestimate the human ability to rationalize anything. It's a yes or no question, Tom.
 

Ram Quixote

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What I want to know is how the poll for 4 games suddenly shot up since Tuesday.

Bunch a revisionist posters.
 

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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...ally-called-himself-deflator-because-hes-fat/

Pats: Jim McNally called himself “Deflator” because he’s fat
Posted by Darin Gantt on May 14, 2015

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Getty Images

Oh, here we go, this makes perfect sense.

Jim McNally didn’t call himself The Deflator because he took air out of footballs, more probably than not at the behest of Tom Brady.

He called himself that because he’s fat.

That’s another of the arguments forwarded by the Patriots in their really long (nearly 20,000 words) refutation of the Ted Wells Report.

The Patriots explain that John Jastremski is a “slender guy,” and usually tried to work out and bulk up. McNally is described as “a big fellow,” and was trying to lose weight.

The Patriots contend investigators had possession of the “espn/deflator” text initially, but didn’t ask McNally about it in their first interview.

“Had they done so, they would have learned from either gentleman one of the ways they used the deflation/deflator term,” they wrote. “‘Deflate’ was a term they used to refer to losing weight.”

They cite specific texts including one which read “deflate and give somebody that jacket.”

“There was nothing complicated or sinister about it,” they wrote, before going through a blow-by-blow of previous texts between McNally and Jastremski which references beer pong and women whose names were “omitted out of respect to Mrs. Jastremski.”

The Patriots suggest that the “jocular texts” undermine Wells’ suggestion that deflator was a reference to anything wrong.

And frankly, that’s as thin as Jastremski apparently is.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...reason-for-espn-text-has-got-to-be-the-shoes/

Patriots: Reason for ESPN text has got to be the shoes
Posted by Darin Gantt on May 14, 2015

spike-lee.jpg


In their effort to poke holes in the Ted Wells Report, the Patriots are taking some pretty big liberties with logic and reason.

As incredible as the suggestion that Jim McNally called himself the “Deflator” because he was trying to lose weight, now they’re saying a reference to calling ESPN was in relation to his receipt of free shoes from John Jastremski.

“Mr. Jastremski had made it clear to Mr. McNally over time that his [Jastremski’s] boss would not be happy with him were he to give away sneakers to Mr. McNally,” the rebuttal reads. “That fact is quite explicit in a number of their texts. (p. 82 — after texting about possibly getting Mr. McNally sneakers and apparel, Mr. Jastremski writes: “unless Dave [his boss, Dave Schoenfeld] leaves the room tomorrow then it’ll wait till next week”).

“Getting sneakers or apparel for his friend Mr. McNally, in short, meant Mr. Jastremski would have to do so behind his boss’s back. They teased each other about whether Mr. Jastremski would get in trouble for giving him sneakers. The May 2014 McNally text reference to “not going to espn” follows his request for “new kicks,” and was Mr. McNally’s way of saying, in substance: “Hey, don’t worry about whether giving me those sneakers will get you in trouble — I’ll never tell.” . . .

“Certainly there is no way one could reasonably base conclusions that a scheme existed and was implemented to improperly deflate footballs based on these texts, particularly where ball tampering at the AFC Championship Game is belied by science, would have been illogical in concept and improbable in practice, and where it would, if anything, had disserved the quarterback.”

What may be illogical in concept is that there are people who feel this warm, yellow liquid running down their leg and are convinced that it’s just rain.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...ejudged-by-league-before-wells-investigation/

Patriots: We were “prejudged” by league before Wells investigation
Posted by Josh Alper on May 14, 2015

cd0ymzcznguwzdbhnduynddiytjhm2yyzthlmtjjotqwyyznpwzjyme2ngjinwexmdbhnjqznmmwzwu3zmvhymfknmzl.jpeg
Getty Images

In their lengthy response to the Wells Report, the Patriots argue that the league prejudged the issues related to a loss of air pressure in footballs during the AFC Championship game.

The basis for that argument is the letter sent to the team by NFL senior vice president David Gardi on the day after the game was played. In the letter, Gardi writes that the league made “preliminary findings” that the balls used by the team did not meet the standard set forth in the rules. The team says that they made those findings “with no basis and no understanding of the effect of temperature on psi” and, therefore, “had already prejudged the issues” before hiring Ted Wells to investigate the issue.

The Patriots point out that Gardi’s letter was inaccurate regarding one ball used by the Patriots measuring at 10.1 psi and that all of the Colts balls conformed to the standard, which leads them to wonder why the team was “dealing with this investigation for months based on inaccurate information.”

“The investigators were not troubled by any of these obvious errors or by the League’s failure to correct them. The inaccuracies in this letter, combined with subsequent leaks to the media that were never corrected by the League placed this investigation on a footing of misinformation, to the Patriots substantial disadvantage.”

A rebuttal of the Wells Report’s scientific evidence by Nobel Prize winner Roderick McKinnon is also included in the report and the Patriots are clear that they believe the league worked backwards after jumping to a conclusion about what happened in January.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...the-guys-theyre-passionately-defending-today/

The Patriots fired the guys they’re passionately defending today
Posted by Darin Gantt on May 14, 2015

The Patriots have launched long-winded defense of themselves today, nearly 20,000 words of defense.

But through all the chapter and verse they’ve cited to explain the true motives of Jim McNally and John Jastremski in this document, one question becomes more and more curious.

If these two guys are so innocent, why did the Patriots fire them?

In the league’s initial release on the Patriots’ punishment, it is made clear who did what to whom.

“Patriots owner Robert Kraft advised commissioner Roger Goodell last week that Patriots employees John Jastremski and James McNally have been indefinitely suspended without pay by the club, effective on May 6th,” the league’s release last week read.

So, these two guys are completely misunderstood, a pair of hapless innocents who didn’t want to get busted for lifting shoes and just wanted to drop a few pounds.

Why then would the Patriots move so quickly and decisively to distance themselves?

Perhaps that can be the next installment of the Patriots’ blog.
 

Tron

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Read about the rebuttal this morning. It's hilarious. Even Cowherd, who's is a huge Brady fan finds the whole rebuttal a complete joke.

Called the deflator cause he was overweight and trying to lose weight? That's seriously the best they could come up with?

What a joke
 

FrantikRam

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I don't think they should be stripped of their super bowl this year. They beat the defending champs, without any sort of advantage (you know that those balls were all properly inflated).

Would they have gotten there without cheating? We'll never know. Maybe not. Except for the fumbles (which is a big deal), there doesn't seem to be too much of an advantage to this IMO. I think the league came down hard on them because of spygate, and because they were uncooperative. It's not as if Tom Brady has never thrown INTs.....and yet the Colts were the only team to bring this to light. Not saying that it's not a big deal - I know it is - but I'd think that if it was that big of a deal, other opposing players that caught Tom Brady's passes would notice. Not just that, but these refs handle the balls all the time as well (after a play is over).

They've lost games and hadn't been to a superbowl in 10 years, so I don't think the refs and league "favor" them. I think that they should be punished for what they did (which they have been), and now everyone should move on.

Brady is still a HOF QB. The Patriots and Brady are not the first group to outright cheat. You can still see that they have had some really great teams. You can still see that Brady is a great QB. He will forever live with "deflategate", but to say they don't deserve this most recent superbowl is too far IMO.

I think using PEDs is worse than deflated footballs. It gets 4 games. I'm happy with the suspension, and players get away with PEDs (probably) all the time - then at some point they get caught. What about the games they played and won before they got caught? Should those wins be vacated? How would that work??
 

FrantikRam

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Okay they need to stop with the defense here. Accept your punishment and move on.
 

Boston Ram

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This crap is driving me crazy---one thing that is worse than cheating is lying about the lies you lie about.
 

Akrasian

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Okay they need to stop with the defense here. Accept your punishment and move on.

I used to teach at the college level, and occasionally a student would complain about a grade. I had a standard policy, stated on the first day of class. I would gladly regrade anything they wanted - nobody's perfect, I make mistakes too - but when I regraded if I found I was too lenient I reserved the right to give a lower grade. Greatly limited the requests for regrading.

The NFL should do the same thing. "Yes Tom. You can appeal. Hmm, after thinking about it and looking at all the evidence again, you're suspended for 8 games, not 4."
 

Selassie I

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Cheating is just like being pregnant.

It is impossible to be just a little bit pregnant.
 

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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...appeal-of-four-game-suspension-via-the-nflpa/

Tom Brady files appeal of four-game suspension via the NFLPA
Posted by Josh Alper on May 14, 2015

Ever since the NFL handed down a four-game suspension for Tom Brady on Monday, we’ve been waiting for official word of an appeal from the Patriots quarterback.

It came on Thursday afternoon. The NFLPA released a statement confirming that Brady is appealing the suspension and included a call for the league to have a third-party arbitrator hear the appeal rather than by NFL Commissoner Roger Goodell or someone appointed by Goodell.

“Given the NFL’s history of inconsistency and arbitrary decisions in disciplinary matters, it is only fair that a neutral arbitrator hear this appeal,” the statement reads. “If Ted Wells and the NFL believe, as their public comments stated, that the evidence in their report is ‘direct’ and ‘inculpatory,’ then they should be confident enough to present their case before someone who is truly independent.”

Brady has lined up attorney Jeffrey Kessler to be part of his legal team for the appeal, which must be heard within 10 days.
 

Stranger

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Great Interview about Deflategate with author of Skypgate Book. Must Listen.

Wells came out after the report and said "that he has more than enough evidence to convict Brady in a Court of Law"

Tonight I am proud to welcome SpyGate Author Bryan O'Leary to the Sports Talk Nation as we discuss not only his book "Spygate: The Untold Story," but I will get his take and analysis of the Ted Wells' report that has uncovered another New England Patriots centered scandal. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is at the center of Deflategate, and could face a severe punishment from the NFL as soon as this week. We will talk about the latest

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/openmi...te-interview-with-spygate-author-bryan-oleary