Merged: Ahahaha. Once a cheat, always a cheat / DeflateGate

the problem is that an official said that they don't actually test the pressure most of the time, that they pick up one or two balls, squeeze them, touch them, love them, then put them back and clear the rest. Rodgers confirmed that or else he wouldn't be "pissed" they let the air out, because he would be "expectant" that they the would have let the air out.

 

Yeah, it sounded to me that Rodgers gets the balls over-inflated, with the expectation that many times, the over-inflated balls will make it through the pre-game checks without having the balls deflated at all. If the refs always let the air out of the balls, why would he waste his time having them over-inflated to begin with??

 

A coach that has a reputation of being so detail-oriented, takes advantage of ineligible/eligible receiver rules, implements wrinkles in every game plan.. Claims ignorance for the way that the footballs for his team are prepared and processed in regard to NFL officiating. I'm finding that hard to believe.

This investigation can't end soon enough.

 

what's taking advantage if it's within the rules?

 

Of course however this unfolds, the Patriots are going to have a chip on their shoulder and will come out next season or as early as the Superbowl as if they have something to prove. They will be mad and want to beat their opponents by 30 and they will want to prove they can do it playing clean without any cheating (or at least none detected). They did this in 2007 and they will probably do it again. They love finding reasons to get mad and take their revenge.

 

I'm not following. I wasn't saying taking advantage of that rule was a bad thing, I was saying that his breadth of knowledge about the rule book displayed in that play call doesn't extend to something as basic as the conditions of your own teams' game balls?

I'm not making any definite accusations, but I find that hard to believe.

 

I don't think anything will happen this year. This is gonna be one of those things that gets totally uncovered a couple of years down the line.

 

This will go away instantly if the Patriots have a dominating win against Seattle. If that happens you will see, everyone but us will stop talking about it. Same thing happened to spygate, the very next season they had a dominating season motivated to shut everyone up, and everyone did shut up except for us posting on internet forums.

So the Patriots will have that same motivation for the Super Bowl.

 

But they lost.

 

Let me remind everyone that the Cheatriots are 0/2 in SBs since getting caught cheating. They were 3/3 while cheating. Obviously BB needs to cheat to gain a competitive edge over opponents.

 

this is all on brady, their his tools, he prepares them, belicek put it all on him, so we'll see in a couple hours if brady will admit to deflating them after the fact or not.

I'm sure he's going to say he prepared the balls the way he wanted, the refs checked them and approved, and thats all he knows.

 

this is gonna be a ballboy gate thing..you know he's gonna say he prepped the balls and showed the refs, and they ok'd them, you know thats all he's gonna say.

 

Of course they are going to put it all on Brady as that limits the culpability of the entire team and organization. It means that if any punishments come down, that it will most likely be limited to the superstar QB, who is going to smile and woo the reporters and investigative committee.

Belichick and the Patriots make the case for plausible deniability and avoid stiffer punishments. All part of the strategy... Brady will get a fine and the org gets reprimanded.

On with the show!

 

Oh yeah...and BB doesn't even know the procedures for where or how the balls are handled...right...Just like with Spygate he denied knowing anything... Ah well, the NPL will sweep this under the rug, the pasties will get slapped on the wrist and Goodell will get his kickback from Kraft and all will be hunky-dory in the NFL...

 

....new signature

 

"I'm not a crook!"

 

somebody deflated the footballs larry, so it does come under his umbrella no matter what.

someone will have to take the hit..but brady will say that he did what he always does and the refs approved..so the the story will move to the equip guy and whether he took it upon himself.

 

So...Bill Belichick contradicts himself in my opinion, unless Im wrong:

Q: What have you talked to Tom Brady about? I assume you've had conversations with Tom about this issue and what happened.

BB: I have no explanation for what happened.

Q: Why do you think these controversies continue to follow you?

BB: I don't have any explanation for what happened.

Q: As many Super Bowls as you've been to, you know distractions come with the territory. What do you say to your younger players who don't have the experience being in this spotlight like this as some of the older players?

BB: None of them are involved in this.

Q: How do you keep them focused though, with all this going on?

BB: None of them are involved in this.


If he doesnt have any explanation as to what happened, then how does he know none of them are involved in this?

He also says I have no knowledge .... well he has some knowledge right? if he knows they werent involved...

 

Well because he is saying Brady is the one involved in it and Brady will give them the answers they're looking for in an hour.

I'm thinking Belichick is coming off clean on this one and Brady is the one in trouble here. Brady even held a team meeting explaining the situation.

My guess is Brady paid off some guys to do the job for him just like Brad Johnson did.

 

For some reason the particular blog post won't open in a new tab. But here's the main page where you can find an analysis on the Pats and their fumbling tendency: http://www.sharpfootballanalysis.com/blog/

In short, the number of plays they run per fumble is way higher than normal/what would be expected. Hmm...This doesn't prove anything. But it's suspicious.

 

Brady will be like

"coach did it"

 

If it comes down to it was Brady.. Any chance they suspend him from Super Bowl?

 

Absolutely not.

 

None. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if he takes the fall because he knows there is zero chance of them suspending him. This way they won't suspend Belicheat and Brady will get a hefty fine.

 

i'd be surprised if he takes the fall since he laughed it off the other day.

 

All they have to do is pay off the equip guy or the ball guy and let him take the hit...


nice negotiating position for that dude ill tell ya..we start at a millie.

 

here's the link to stream the press conference at 4:15

http://www.csnne.com/new-england-patriots/watch-live-tom-brady-press-conference-deflategate

 

I keep hearing from Pats fans.. Like this made any difference.. Look at the score. Everybody does it. Well, obviously everybody is not, because all of the Colts balls were fine. And... So you still killed the Colts.. It doesn't change that you still cheated.

 

Nope, he will get fined.

just speculating, but belichick likely did know of this, but brady and him likely had a meeting together to figure out the best story they can tell without sanctions, and its obvious to everyone if Brady takes the dive for the team, the sanctions are way less.

 

Brady will likely tell a story like, I had the equipment guys put the balls in the dryer an hour before kickoff, that may have caused deflation, etc etc.

 

they were filled with ramen

 

Yeah the Patriots fans excuses are not flying. So QBs are doing things to footballs before games. Those things are not changing the air pressure of the balls. And they are making it through inspection. HUGE difference between that and altering the balls after inspection to make the balls illegal per NFL rules and it sounds like that's what's happened here.

The fact that it looks like the NFL was trying to catch the Patriots in the act makes things interesting. Sounds like they wanted to catch them red handed, so I'm not so sure we'll get just the slap on the wrist we are expecting.

 

Belichick throws QB under bus, QB throws equipment guys under bus. Typical. Stay classy Patriots.

 

Well not what I expected from Brady. And I'm going to stop caring about this. It didn't affect the game, the score says that. So now I'll just wait for the Super Bowl.

 

Not my reaction at all. The 2 people that should know most about it are pretending they knew nothing - essentially lying through their teeth. I'm angered even more, even though I know it probably doesn't do any good.

 

Classic buck passing.

 

That "ISIS" remark was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy unnecessary and came out of nowhere from Brady...

 

Reminds me of political administrations who when caught doing something wrong, someone low on the totem pole always gets the blame. It happens in business too.

 

There are cameras everywhere. Where do the refs inspect the balls? On the field or inside the stadium somewhere? Where did the balls go? Establish a chain of custody.

 

I blame the NFL higher ups for this entire issue. All they had to do to prevent an issue like this is for the officials to supervise
the inflation of the game balls and then have one official responsible for monitoring the balls during the game.

There is no good reason to have each team prepare their own game balls prior to the game. A football is a football and each team should be required to use the same exact balls during the game instead of letting each QB select which balls he wants to use.

I don't agree with what the Patriots did in this instance, but it certainly had zero effect on the outcome of the game.