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Most of this morning's Peter King - MMQB will be in this thread because it mostly deals with Deflate-Gate. To read the whole article click the link below.
****************************************************************
http://mmqb.si.com/2015/05/18/robert-kraft-patriots-owner-nfl-deflategate/
Simon Bruty/Sports Illustrated/The MMQB
Robert Kraft is Talking, and He’s Pretty Peeved
The Patriots owner is ‘really worked up’ at the unprecedented penalty the NFL levied on his team based on what he tells The MMQB is ‘ambiguous evidence.’ Plus more on PAT proposals, the La’el Collins saga and a new NFL drug protocol
By Peter King
Since the football world was stunned by the release of the Ted Wells report 12 days ago and roundhoused by the strong league sanctions last Monday, you haven’t heard much out of the New England camp aside from two scripted statements of indignation and a lawyerly screed about the weak points of the Wells Report. That changes this morning. The boss is speaking.
In his first public comments since being hit with the biggest team sanction in the 95-year history of the National Football League, Patriots owner Robert Kraft told The MMQB over the weekend that he is convinced his quarterback, Tom Brady, played no part in any football-deflation scheme before the AFC Championship Game in January.
Asked if Brady had told him he was innocent, Kraft said: “Yes. Because we had the discussion—if you did it, let’s just deal with it and take our hit and move on. I’ve known Tommy 16 years, almost half his life. He’s a man, and he’s always been honest with me, and I trust him. I believed what he told me. He has never lied to me, and I have found no hard or conclusive evidence to the contrary.”
Kraft spoke for 50 minutes Saturday by phone from his home outside Boston. He sounded alternately defiant and angry. He is convinced the league does not have a smoking gun that would prove anyone connected with the organization deflated a bag of footballs to make them more to Brady’s liking in the AFC title game four months ago. He is convinced the Wells Report distorted the science to fit a conclusion that doesn’t work. He thinks the league has nothing but what he called “ambiguous circumstantial evidence” on the Patriots.
“This whole thing has been very disturbing,” Kraft said. “I’m still thinking things out very carefully. But when you work for something your whole life …
“I just get really worked up. To receive the harshest penalty in league history is just not fair. The anger and frustration with this process, to me, it wasn’t fair. If we’re giving all the power to the NFL and the office of the commissioner, this is something that can happen to all 32 teams. We need to have fair and balanced investigating and reporting. But in this report, every inference went against us … inferences from ambiguous, circumstantial evidence all went against us. That’s the thing that really bothers me.
“If they want to penalize us because there’s an aroma around this? That’s what this feels like. If you don’t have the so-called smoking gun, it really is frustrating. And they don’t have it. This thing never should have risen to this level.”
There was much Kraft wouldn’t say, and he was at times curt, which is rare for him. Understand why this sanction—a four-game ban for Brady, a $1 million fine for the franchise, and the loss of first-round and fourth-round draft choices—has cut so deeply. Kraft is no absentee owner who swooped in to buy an out-of-town franchise. Born in Boston, he’s lived in the area his entire life except for his college years and talks proudly of having attended at least one Patriots game in every one of their 55 seasons. He bought the franchise 21 years ago and oversaw construction of a privately funded stadium finished in 2002. The Patriots have won four world titles under his ownership. You bash Robert Kraft’s franchise, and you bash his family.
Asked about his current relationship with commissioner Roger Goodell (which was until two weeks ago warm and convivial), Kraft said: “You’ll have to ask him.” He wouldn’t answer further.
Asked whether he might violate NFL bylaws by going to court to try to get the league penalties overturned, Kraft said, “I’m not going to comment on that at this point in time. I’m going to leave it. I won’t say.”
Asked why he suspended club employees John Jastremski and Jim McNally despite fiercely proclaiming his organization’s innocence, Kraft refused comment—for what he claimed were a variety of reasons.
Asked if he thinks the punishment was especially hard because the other 31 teams in the league believe he has such a close relationship with Goodell and Goodell had to come down hard to prove he can be harsh to a close supporter, Kraft said: “I’ve heard that a lot, but it’s hard for me to accept that.”
Kraft is on five significant league business committees. He chairs the lucrative broadcast committee, and the NFL is in the midst of contracts worth an estimated $40 billion through 2022 with the networks and DirecTV. Asked if he would remain as active in league affairs as he has been, Kraft said: “I’d rather not get into that for a week or two.”
It’s either an exceedingly awkward or exceedingly fortuitous time for the NFL’s annual two-day spring meetings, which begin Tuesday in San Francisco. The Brady/Patriot sanctions rocked the NFL in the past two weeks, and this will be the first time for Kraft to see his peers—and to see the league office staff, including Goodell, that came down so hard on his franchise. It’ll either be awkward because Kraft won’t be ready for any olive branches, or fortuitous because it’s certain the league would like to start some of healing process with the defending Super Bowl championship team—and clearly the best franchise in football over the past 15 years.
This weekend, the Kraft-Goodell relationship felt like Obama-Putin. The tone of Kraft’s voice made it sound like it’s too early for peace talks.
Kraft’s anger is based largely on the fact that he feels the Wells Report chose to highlight some bits of science and ignore others. For instance, there were two gauges to measure the air pressure in footballs in the officials’ locker room before the AFC title game. Referee Walt Anderson couldn’t swear which he used to do the pregame measurements, but his “best recollection” is he used a Wilson-logoed air-pressure gauge to measure the footballs. The Patriots’ footballs were found to be at or near 12.5 pounds per square inch.
At halftime, after the Colts told the league a ball Brady threw in the first half that was intercepted by Colt linebacker D’Qwell Jackson felt under-inflated, 11 Patriots footballs were measured for air pressure at halftime. On page 113 of the Wells Report, after a description of the scientific Ideal Gas Law, Wells says the Patriots footballs should have measured between 11.32 psi and 11.52 psi, based on the effects the weather conditions would have had on the balls in the first half of the game. The average of the Wilson-logoed gauge measurements of the 11 footballs was 11.49 psi, which would put the balls well within range of the predicted halftime pressure.
The other gauge measured the balls, on average, at 11.11 psi, which was seen as below the minimum allowed by the Ideal Gas Law and a sign the footballs may have been tampered. But what if Anderson used the Wilson-logoed gauge pregame, and again at halftime, and the balls were in the proper range as predicted by science?
“Anderson has a pregame recollection of what gauge he used, and it’s disregarded, and the [Wells] Report just assumes he uses the other gauge,” Kraft said. “Footballs have never been measured at halftime of any other game in NFL history. They have no idea how much footballs go down in cold weather or expand in warm weather. There is just no evidence that tampering with the footballs ever happened.”
Once the reports of deflated footballs arose—ESPN reported three days after the game that 11 of 12 New England footballs were found to be at least two pounds under the 12.5-psi minimum when measured at halftime—the Patriots felt they’d already been convicted in the court of public opinion. The fact is, none of the footballs in the 22 measured at halftime (11 balls checked with two gauges each) was more than two pounds low; one measured at exactly 10.50 psi.
There is enough evidence that casts the Patriots and Brady in a bad light—the fact that McNally referred to himself as “the Deflator” in a text message; the six phone calls between Brady and Jastremski over three days once the first deflation charges surfaced, after they hadn’t spoken for six months ; the texting between McNally and Jastremski about inflation of footballs.
The league can impose discipline in cases involving integrity of the game if it feels the “preponderance of evidence” proves a team has cheated, and league executive vice president Troy Vincent, who issued the sanctions, obviously felt the preponderance of evidence came down against New England.
I asked Kraft why he seemed to grudgingly accept the 2007 Spygate sanctions but not these.
“Last time,” said Kraft, “there was no dispute about the facts. The team admittedly said what happened. … It was illegal to videotape [the opposing sidelines], and in the end we admitted it and took our penance. This is very different. In 2007 we did something and acknowledged the fact of what was done. This is an accusation of wrongdoing, without proof.”
Kraft was circumspect about the reaction of coach Bill Belichick to the punishment. Belichick hasn’t been heard from since the story exploded. “I’m telling you, Bill didn’t know about it, and I didn’t know about it,” Kraft said. “I’m really happy that his focus is building a roster for the 2015 team and preparing for the challenges of the 2015 season. I especially respect this about his leadership style—he really can compartmentalize, and that’s what he’s doing here.”
The Patriots have to hope they get some relief from Brady’s appeal to the league office (a longshot), and then must determine if Brady as an individual or Kraft on behalf of the organization goes outside the family to challenge the league ruling. There were indications over the weekend that Kraft was leaning against going rogue and suing the league, but talking to him, it still felt like a fluid situation.
Now Kraft, as angry as this makes him, has begun to think the team may have to play without Brady for a quarter of the season. A second-year quarterback from Eastern Illinois, Jimmy Garoppolo, is in line to start the first game of his NFL career on national TV, in the opening game of the season, as the Patriots begin defense of their Super Bowl title.
“How do you think Garoppolo will do, if he has to play?” I asked.
Kraft tried to muster up some enthusiasm for Garoppolo, but this wasn’t the day for that. “My gut feeling is the same as yours,” Kraft said. “He is a very hard worker, a very fine young man, but until the bullets are flying and you’re out there, no one knows. Think about how many of these first-round picks, even, don’t make it. [Garoppolo was the team’s second-round pick in 2014.] He works hard and he studies hard, though.”
The owner of the scarred New England Patriots paused for a second.
“Deep down,” Kraft said, “I would hope that’s an academic question.”
-----------------------------------
An interesting take, from a former commissioner.
I thought the op-ed on the deflation controversy by former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, in the New York Daily News, was interesting because of his faith in the investigation. In part, Vincent wrote:
“It was the right call. Sports is a huge business. The NFL is projecting revenues of more than $12 billion this year alone. Baseball, basketball and hockey are also in the multibillionaire club. All that success depends entirely on fans caring about the outcome of games. We the fans can’t be invested in the outcome unless we firmly believe the rules are being obeyed. We all have to trust we are watching real athletic contests where the winners succeed because of the skills they demonstrate in accordance with the applicable standards. If we let the games drift away from that, organized sports will wind up like professional wrestling.
“It’s unfortunate that the lengthy investigation into Deflategate could only reach the limp conclusion that game balls were ‘more probably [sic] than not’ deflated to accommodate Brady. It is equally unfortunate that the investigation reverted to lawyerspeak to state its conclusion, leaving the NFL with a flimsy peg on which to hang its sanctions. But the findings are what they are, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was correct to hand down a firm punishment against Brady and the Patriots.
“ … The NFL stood firmly for the rules. That is what truly matters.”
---------------------
“Whats up dorito dink”
—Patriots officials locker room attendant Jim McNally, in a 2014 text message to fellow keeper of the footballs at Gillette Stadium John Jastremski, as relayed in the Patriots’ rebuttal to the Wells Report on Thursday.
--------------------
“Mr. Brady believes he has never turned down [an autograph] request. If receiving an autograph from Mr. Brady is evidence that you are being rewarded by him for nefarious conduct, then hundreds or even thousands of people must be part of a scheme of wrongdoing.”
—Also from the Patriots’ rebuttal
“I believe that to the bottom of my heart.”
—Investigator Ted Wells, on whether the text messages between Tom Brady and one of the two Patriots employees accused of deflating footballs are proof that Brady was complicit in the ball-deflating scheme.
****************************************************************
http://mmqb.si.com/2015/05/18/robert-kraft-patriots-owner-nfl-deflategate/
Simon Bruty/Sports Illustrated/The MMQB
Robert Kraft is Talking, and He’s Pretty Peeved
The Patriots owner is ‘really worked up’ at the unprecedented penalty the NFL levied on his team based on what he tells The MMQB is ‘ambiguous evidence.’ Plus more on PAT proposals, the La’el Collins saga and a new NFL drug protocol
By Peter King
Since the football world was stunned by the release of the Ted Wells report 12 days ago and roundhoused by the strong league sanctions last Monday, you haven’t heard much out of the New England camp aside from two scripted statements of indignation and a lawyerly screed about the weak points of the Wells Report. That changes this morning. The boss is speaking.
In his first public comments since being hit with the biggest team sanction in the 95-year history of the National Football League, Patriots owner Robert Kraft told The MMQB over the weekend that he is convinced his quarterback, Tom Brady, played no part in any football-deflation scheme before the AFC Championship Game in January.
Asked if Brady had told him he was innocent, Kraft said: “Yes. Because we had the discussion—if you did it, let’s just deal with it and take our hit and move on. I’ve known Tommy 16 years, almost half his life. He’s a man, and he’s always been honest with me, and I trust him. I believed what he told me. He has never lied to me, and I have found no hard or conclusive evidence to the contrary.”
Kraft spoke for 50 minutes Saturday by phone from his home outside Boston. He sounded alternately defiant and angry. He is convinced the league does not have a smoking gun that would prove anyone connected with the organization deflated a bag of footballs to make them more to Brady’s liking in the AFC title game four months ago. He is convinced the Wells Report distorted the science to fit a conclusion that doesn’t work. He thinks the league has nothing but what he called “ambiguous circumstantial evidence” on the Patriots.
“This whole thing has been very disturbing,” Kraft said. “I’m still thinking things out very carefully. But when you work for something your whole life …
“I just get really worked up. To receive the harshest penalty in league history is just not fair. The anger and frustration with this process, to me, it wasn’t fair. If we’re giving all the power to the NFL and the office of the commissioner, this is something that can happen to all 32 teams. We need to have fair and balanced investigating and reporting. But in this report, every inference went against us … inferences from ambiguous, circumstantial evidence all went against us. That’s the thing that really bothers me.
“If they want to penalize us because there’s an aroma around this? That’s what this feels like. If you don’t have the so-called smoking gun, it really is frustrating. And they don’t have it. This thing never should have risen to this level.”
There was much Kraft wouldn’t say, and he was at times curt, which is rare for him. Understand why this sanction—a four-game ban for Brady, a $1 million fine for the franchise, and the loss of first-round and fourth-round draft choices—has cut so deeply. Kraft is no absentee owner who swooped in to buy an out-of-town franchise. Born in Boston, he’s lived in the area his entire life except for his college years and talks proudly of having attended at least one Patriots game in every one of their 55 seasons. He bought the franchise 21 years ago and oversaw construction of a privately funded stadium finished in 2002. The Patriots have won four world titles under his ownership. You bash Robert Kraft’s franchise, and you bash his family.
Asked about his current relationship with commissioner Roger Goodell (which was until two weeks ago warm and convivial), Kraft said: “You’ll have to ask him.” He wouldn’t answer further.
Asked whether he might violate NFL bylaws by going to court to try to get the league penalties overturned, Kraft said, “I’m not going to comment on that at this point in time. I’m going to leave it. I won’t say.”
Asked why he suspended club employees John Jastremski and Jim McNally despite fiercely proclaiming his organization’s innocence, Kraft refused comment—for what he claimed were a variety of reasons.
Asked if he thinks the punishment was especially hard because the other 31 teams in the league believe he has such a close relationship with Goodell and Goodell had to come down hard to prove he can be harsh to a close supporter, Kraft said: “I’ve heard that a lot, but it’s hard for me to accept that.”
Kraft is on five significant league business committees. He chairs the lucrative broadcast committee, and the NFL is in the midst of contracts worth an estimated $40 billion through 2022 with the networks and DirecTV. Asked if he would remain as active in league affairs as he has been, Kraft said: “I’d rather not get into that for a week or two.”
It’s either an exceedingly awkward or exceedingly fortuitous time for the NFL’s annual two-day spring meetings, which begin Tuesday in San Francisco. The Brady/Patriot sanctions rocked the NFL in the past two weeks, and this will be the first time for Kraft to see his peers—and to see the league office staff, including Goodell, that came down so hard on his franchise. It’ll either be awkward because Kraft won’t be ready for any olive branches, or fortuitous because it’s certain the league would like to start some of healing process with the defending Super Bowl championship team—and clearly the best franchise in football over the past 15 years.
This weekend, the Kraft-Goodell relationship felt like Obama-Putin. The tone of Kraft’s voice made it sound like it’s too early for peace talks.
Kraft’s anger is based largely on the fact that he feels the Wells Report chose to highlight some bits of science and ignore others. For instance, there were two gauges to measure the air pressure in footballs in the officials’ locker room before the AFC title game. Referee Walt Anderson couldn’t swear which he used to do the pregame measurements, but his “best recollection” is he used a Wilson-logoed air-pressure gauge to measure the footballs. The Patriots’ footballs were found to be at or near 12.5 pounds per square inch.
At halftime, after the Colts told the league a ball Brady threw in the first half that was intercepted by Colt linebacker D’Qwell Jackson felt under-inflated, 11 Patriots footballs were measured for air pressure at halftime. On page 113 of the Wells Report, after a description of the scientific Ideal Gas Law, Wells says the Patriots footballs should have measured between 11.32 psi and 11.52 psi, based on the effects the weather conditions would have had on the balls in the first half of the game. The average of the Wilson-logoed gauge measurements of the 11 footballs was 11.49 psi, which would put the balls well within range of the predicted halftime pressure.
The other gauge measured the balls, on average, at 11.11 psi, which was seen as below the minimum allowed by the Ideal Gas Law and a sign the footballs may have been tampered. But what if Anderson used the Wilson-logoed gauge pregame, and again at halftime, and the balls were in the proper range as predicted by science?
“Anderson has a pregame recollection of what gauge he used, and it’s disregarded, and the [Wells] Report just assumes he uses the other gauge,” Kraft said. “Footballs have never been measured at halftime of any other game in NFL history. They have no idea how much footballs go down in cold weather or expand in warm weather. There is just no evidence that tampering with the footballs ever happened.”
Once the reports of deflated footballs arose—ESPN reported three days after the game that 11 of 12 New England footballs were found to be at least two pounds under the 12.5-psi minimum when measured at halftime—the Patriots felt they’d already been convicted in the court of public opinion. The fact is, none of the footballs in the 22 measured at halftime (11 balls checked with two gauges each) was more than two pounds low; one measured at exactly 10.50 psi.
There is enough evidence that casts the Patriots and Brady in a bad light—the fact that McNally referred to himself as “the Deflator” in a text message; the six phone calls between Brady and Jastremski over three days once the first deflation charges surfaced, after they hadn’t spoken for six months ; the texting between McNally and Jastremski about inflation of footballs.
The league can impose discipline in cases involving integrity of the game if it feels the “preponderance of evidence” proves a team has cheated, and league executive vice president Troy Vincent, who issued the sanctions, obviously felt the preponderance of evidence came down against New England.
I asked Kraft why he seemed to grudgingly accept the 2007 Spygate sanctions but not these.
“Last time,” said Kraft, “there was no dispute about the facts. The team admittedly said what happened. … It was illegal to videotape [the opposing sidelines], and in the end we admitted it and took our penance. This is very different. In 2007 we did something and acknowledged the fact of what was done. This is an accusation of wrongdoing, without proof.”
Kraft was circumspect about the reaction of coach Bill Belichick to the punishment. Belichick hasn’t been heard from since the story exploded. “I’m telling you, Bill didn’t know about it, and I didn’t know about it,” Kraft said. “I’m really happy that his focus is building a roster for the 2015 team and preparing for the challenges of the 2015 season. I especially respect this about his leadership style—he really can compartmentalize, and that’s what he’s doing here.”
The Patriots have to hope they get some relief from Brady’s appeal to the league office (a longshot), and then must determine if Brady as an individual or Kraft on behalf of the organization goes outside the family to challenge the league ruling. There were indications over the weekend that Kraft was leaning against going rogue and suing the league, but talking to him, it still felt like a fluid situation.
Now Kraft, as angry as this makes him, has begun to think the team may have to play without Brady for a quarter of the season. A second-year quarterback from Eastern Illinois, Jimmy Garoppolo, is in line to start the first game of his NFL career on national TV, in the opening game of the season, as the Patriots begin defense of their Super Bowl title.
“How do you think Garoppolo will do, if he has to play?” I asked.
Kraft tried to muster up some enthusiasm for Garoppolo, but this wasn’t the day for that. “My gut feeling is the same as yours,” Kraft said. “He is a very hard worker, a very fine young man, but until the bullets are flying and you’re out there, no one knows. Think about how many of these first-round picks, even, don’t make it. [Garoppolo was the team’s second-round pick in 2014.] He works hard and he studies hard, though.”
The owner of the scarred New England Patriots paused for a second.
“Deep down,” Kraft said, “I would hope that’s an academic question.”
-----------------------------------
An interesting take, from a former commissioner.
I thought the op-ed on the deflation controversy by former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, in the New York Daily News, was interesting because of his faith in the investigation. In part, Vincent wrote:
“It was the right call. Sports is a huge business. The NFL is projecting revenues of more than $12 billion this year alone. Baseball, basketball and hockey are also in the multibillionaire club. All that success depends entirely on fans caring about the outcome of games. We the fans can’t be invested in the outcome unless we firmly believe the rules are being obeyed. We all have to trust we are watching real athletic contests where the winners succeed because of the skills they demonstrate in accordance with the applicable standards. If we let the games drift away from that, organized sports will wind up like professional wrestling.
“It’s unfortunate that the lengthy investigation into Deflategate could only reach the limp conclusion that game balls were ‘more probably [sic] than not’ deflated to accommodate Brady. It is equally unfortunate that the investigation reverted to lawyerspeak to state its conclusion, leaving the NFL with a flimsy peg on which to hang its sanctions. But the findings are what they are, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was correct to hand down a firm punishment against Brady and the Patriots.
“ … The NFL stood firmly for the rules. That is what truly matters.”
---------------------
“Whats up dorito dink”
—Patriots officials locker room attendant Jim McNally, in a 2014 text message to fellow keeper of the footballs at Gillette Stadium John Jastremski, as relayed in the Patriots’ rebuttal to the Wells Report on Thursday.
--------------------
“Mr. Brady believes he has never turned down [an autograph] request. If receiving an autograph from Mr. Brady is evidence that you are being rewarded by him for nefarious conduct, then hundreds or even thousands of people must be part of a scheme of wrongdoing.”
—Also from the Patriots’ rebuttal
“I believe that to the bottom of my heart.”
—Investigator Ted Wells, on whether the text messages between Tom Brady and one of the two Patriots employees accused of deflating footballs are proof that Brady was complicit in the ball-deflating scheme.
