Post by Guvmintcheeze on May 12, 2015 2:54:51 GMT
Armour: Tom Brady, Patriots get what they deserve from NFL
Nancy Armour, USA TODAY Sports
Tom Brady's biggest sin wasn't messing with footballs. It was messing with the NFL's credibility.
The NFL came down hard on Brady and the New England Patriots on Monday, and rightly so. Cheating, no matter how silly or minor it seems, compromises the integrity of the game. If fans lose trust in the game or the people playing it, it makes the sport a farce, little different than the WWE.
Had NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell let the Super Bowl champs and their Glamour Boy slide, it would have sent the message that rules don't matter, diminishing the league and everyone associated with it. What the NFL perceived as his limited cooperation with Ted Wells' investigation didn't help, with Brady all but daring Goodell to remind everyone who's really in charge by refusing to turn over emails and phone records.
"The report documents your failure to cooperate fully and candidly with the investigation, including by refusing to produce any relevant electronic evidence," Troy Vincent, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations, said in his letter informing Brady of his four-game suspension.
"The integrity of the game is of paramount importance to everyone in our league, and requires unshakable commitment to fairness and compliance with the playing rules."
Since Wells released his 243-page report last week, critics have tried to poke holes in it by questioning everything from the methodology of the testing to why there was no smoking air gauge. Brady's agent, Don Yee, did so again Monday, outlining what will surely be the crux of an appeal by calling the Wells report "an incredibly frail exercise in fact-finding and logic."
But that ignores common sense.
Brady is one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game, a four-time Super Bowl winner and two-time NFL MVP. Do you really think two low-level Patriots employees are going to mess with his footballs without his knowledge? Without his direction?
You're going to buy that those two employees just happened to joke about letting the air out of the footballs, with one even calling himself "The Deflator?" And that the flurry of phone calls and texts between Brady and equipment assistant John Jastremski after the deflated footballs were discovered was pure coincidence?
Please.
Letting air out of footballs sounds like a high school prank, not something so serious it merits benching Brady for a quarter of the regular season. Odds are he won't sit that long, with his sentence likely to be reduced by a game or two upon appeal.
It's not as if the deflated footballs made a difference, either. Brady threw for two touchdowns and the Patriots outscored the Indianapolis Colts 28-0 in the second half of the AFC Championship, after the shenanigans were discovered.
None of that is the point, however. Brady played fast and loose with the rules, and now he has to pay the price. Some might say it's too high, with the Patriots docked two draft picks and fined $1 million on top of Brady's suspension.
But this isn't about deflated footballs, it's about integrity and honesty. And those don't come cheap.
Nancy Armour, USA TODAY Sports
Tom Brady's biggest sin wasn't messing with footballs. It was messing with the NFL's credibility.
The NFL came down hard on Brady and the New England Patriots on Monday, and rightly so. Cheating, no matter how silly or minor it seems, compromises the integrity of the game. If fans lose trust in the game or the people playing it, it makes the sport a farce, little different than the WWE.
Had NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell let the Super Bowl champs and their Glamour Boy slide, it would have sent the message that rules don't matter, diminishing the league and everyone associated with it. What the NFL perceived as his limited cooperation with Ted Wells' investigation didn't help, with Brady all but daring Goodell to remind everyone who's really in charge by refusing to turn over emails and phone records.
"The report documents your failure to cooperate fully and candidly with the investigation, including by refusing to produce any relevant electronic evidence," Troy Vincent, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations, said in his letter informing Brady of his four-game suspension.
"The integrity of the game is of paramount importance to everyone in our league, and requires unshakable commitment to fairness and compliance with the playing rules."
Since Wells released his 243-page report last week, critics have tried to poke holes in it by questioning everything from the methodology of the testing to why there was no smoking air gauge. Brady's agent, Don Yee, did so again Monday, outlining what will surely be the crux of an appeal by calling the Wells report "an incredibly frail exercise in fact-finding and logic."
But that ignores common sense.
Brady is one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game, a four-time Super Bowl winner and two-time NFL MVP. Do you really think two low-level Patriots employees are going to mess with his footballs without his knowledge? Without his direction?
You're going to buy that those two employees just happened to joke about letting the air out of the footballs, with one even calling himself "The Deflator?" And that the flurry of phone calls and texts between Brady and equipment assistant John Jastremski after the deflated footballs were discovered was pure coincidence?
Please.
Letting air out of footballs sounds like a high school prank, not something so serious it merits benching Brady for a quarter of the regular season. Odds are he won't sit that long, with his sentence likely to be reduced by a game or two upon appeal.
It's not as if the deflated footballs made a difference, either. Brady threw for two touchdowns and the Patriots outscored the Indianapolis Colts 28-0 in the second half of the AFC Championship, after the shenanigans were discovered.
None of that is the point, however. Brady played fast and loose with the rules, and now he has to pay the price. Some might say it's too high, with the Patriots docked two draft picks and fined $1 million on top of Brady's suspension.
But this isn't about deflated footballs, it's about integrity and honesty. And those don't come cheap.