Is it just me or do you not agree that deflategate is nonsense

[LandryFan]

http://www.si.com/nfl/2015/01/22/new-england-patriots-deflategate-tom-brady

Thanks for the link. Had not seen/heard that.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

Classic case of over blowing. So now he shouldnt be playing in the NFL eh?

If he cannot play within the rules, then yes...he should not be playing in the NFL. The game simply is not for him if he cannot play within the rules.

But, we know he can play within the rules, he just chose not to.

So no...I'm not overblowing it at all. I would feel the same way

Brady did just fine in the 2nd half of the Colts game when they blew them out and in the SuperBowl. Clearly its a preference and not some kind of huge advantage. I cant wait till next year when Brady comes out pissed off with another incredible year. People are jealous of Brady and his success so they hate. Me personally, I appreciate the greatness of Brady and I awe at his abilities. Because above all else I am a football fan. I actually appreciate a team/player that will do anything to win a championship. All teams cheat and all players cheat at one point or another. Its what you get caught doing.

So, you're just going to ignore the enormous drop in the Patriots fumble rate since 2007 which went from the league average to far, far better than any outdoor team in the NFL? And you're going to ignore Brady's tremendous drop-off in his fumble and INT rate...all of which coincided with the rule change and Jim McNally's employment with the team?

What about the Ravens game? Y'know, another game where he used deflated footballs and they eeked out a victory that put them in the AFC Championship game.

I don't appreciate a team/player that will do anything to win a championship if it means doing it illegally. Just not the way I was raised. I would rather beat somebody cleanly so I and they have zero doubts that when I won I was just simply better than they were. If that's old fashioned American spirit, then I'm guilty as charged.





YR

 

[DallasEast]

Thanks for the link. Had not seen/heard that.

At the time, I remember saying to myself that I hope he has tight control over anyone he is associated with. It only takes one person to slip up and drag everyone else down with you.

Drag everyone down except Bill Belicheck, that is. lol.

 

[WPBCowboysFan]

Yep, Brady broke the rules and he should be punished. But lets be honest, its really not that big of a deal. Certainly not how badly its blown out of proportion by the media. The 2nd half of the Colts game should tell you how much of a big deal the deflating of the ball wasnt.

https://encrypted-tbn3.***NOT-ALLOWED***/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcToZHEU2ixMAVauStLF5RNJJoGgalzECHBdK9RgJiz3Kz2HVwtVsA

 

[big dog cowboy]

Cmon, this whole inflate thing is ridiculous. Its about breaking a rule. And talk about a minor rule? Honestly, its foolish.

Call up Goodell tomorrow and make you case and see if he agrees with you.

Cheating and integrity are never nonsense.

This guy gets it.

 

[ActualCowboysFan]

Good chance the Cowboys are in the NFCCG if Murray doesn't fumble and Dez holds onto the ball. Kind of shows how big a little PSI can be.

 

[Hoofbite]

Shock aside, wouldn't removing weather as a variable make for a better sampling? The elements have affected games for as long as football has existed. Analyzing data without variables such as rain, wind, unregulated temperature, etc. seems like a logical approach in my opinion. Otherwise, one must factor how those variables should be considered insignificant to altering ball surfaces, etc. Ergo, a wet ball is slippery in an open air stadium on a rainy day but normally dry within a domed stadium.

Maybe, if after you establish their effect is significant which is something he never did.

 

[Derinyar]

If you think this is a minor rule and insignificant then it should worry you more. If a player/team is willing to risk a major issue over something that is meaningless then what would they be willing to do over something more serious. That's the issue with integrity, once you violate it once its easier the next time and easier the time after that. The Patriots franchise has shown a repeated willingness to cheat, all under the same Head Coach and QB, and I doubt that's going to change while Belichek is there. There just hasn't been enough of a penalty to the team to make it really hurt yet and until there is why the hell would they stop.

 

[Hoofbite]

You are obviously struggling with the concept of cheating

If you do something against the rules that you think will help you, that is cheating. Cheating depends on intent not results

My argument is the same as it was when people tried to minimize the impact of spygate: NFL franchises are too busy doing things that they think help them, they're not going to do something repeatedly that is not helping them

If the Pats or bellichick of Brady were doing this, they obviously thought it was helping them enough that it was worth breaking rules to do it

Lol at it being overblown

I'm not sure how many times I have to say that I think they should be punished. I just also doubt that the impact was anywhere near what it has been made out to be.

 

[Hoofbite]

Romo and Luck haven't deflated footballs. In fact, the league actually proved that Luck did not deflate footballs.

That's not the point. I'm offering an alternative reason for a reduction in fumbles. Good players strive to get better. Is it really so hard to believe that a future HoF quality player would make a conscious effort to improve. That's why I asked if you think Luck will finish his career with 10 fumbles per season.

And this goes beyond Brady as the entire team has dramatically reduced their fumble percentage since 2007.

That's exactly why I mentioned San Diego, and to a lesser extent Baltimore. If you look at every other skill position than QB, all three teams are in the same neighborhood in terms of total fumbles over the past 7 to 8 seasons. SD has 148 fumbles since 2007 compared to NE's 121. Of that 27 fumble difference, the QB position makes up 23 of those fumbles.

And Romo's drop in fumble rate is not nearly at the drop in fumble and INT that Brady has had. He went from being very good at not fumbling and not throwing picks to historically phenomenal. All starting in 2007.

So now we are able to tease out who's a cheater and who's not based solely on the degree of improvement?

The problem is that Brian Burke did analysis of his own and showed that compared to outdoors teams, the Patriots are wayyyy better at not fumbling than anybody else and it happened right overnight....in 2007.

Here's the article.

http://www.advancedfootballanalytic...ral/224-the-patriots-have-great-ball-security

"Whoa. In this case NE is at the top of the list, and the next best team is a distant second. Notice how the second team (BLT) through the second to last team (PHI) have rates that are within 1 or 2 plays of each other. NE, however, is better than the next best team by 20 plays per fumble

You might notice that 2013 was a bit of a down year for NE ball security. That's partly due to the week 12 game against DEN in insanely frigid conditions. NE had 6 fumbles and Denver had 5. Extremely cold temperatures are associated with high fumble rates--They're about 35% more frequent than usual in the coldest games. But if we threw out that game, NE would have a 60 play-per-fumble rate. Not the best that season, but still better than any other outdoor team's 5-year average." - Brian Burke

The real problem is you can't just exclude dome teams because it makes the numbers look better. Atlanta did not get the dome advantage prior to Matt Ryan, and Indy has not had the dome advantage since Peyton Manning. Whatever difference a dome does make is significantly less important than who the QB is. This is entirely obvious.

Not to mention that Brady's fumble rate reduced by 114%, this after 6 seasons as a starter and missing the entire 2008 season with an injury.

Compared to Romo whose fumble rate reduced by 76%, after 2.5 seasons as a starter...and playing in a dome-like stadium.

Again, the difference between a legitimate improvement and an illegitimate improvement is somewhere between a reduction of 76% and a reduction of 114%? According to who? Where exactly is this cut off?

 

[Yakuza Rich]

That's not the point. I'm offering an alternative reason for a reduction in fumbles. Good players strive to get better. Is it really so hard to believe that a future HoF quality player would make a conscious effort to improve. That's why I asked if you think Luck will finish his career with 10 fumbles per season.

The issue is that Brady was caught cheating and that deflating a football appears, at the very least, to make the ball more difficult to fumble.

YOU used the Romo comparison and I show why there are flaws in the comparison. Romo's numbers didn't improve nearly as much and he was in a dome. Furthermore, Romo's numbers SHOULD improve by more since he only had 2.5 years as a starter under his belt at Texas Stadium and has played for 5.5 years at the new AT&T Stadium.

OTOH, Brady had 6 years as starter. His fumble rate and INT rate improved nicely from years 1-3 to years 4-6, roughly at the same level that Romo's fumble and INT rate improved during those times. But instead of plateauing because that is what virtually every QB's fumble and INT rate does over time, he saw another enormous improvement in his fumble rate and INT rate from years 7-14. That's why your analogy is flawed and incomplete.

I don't expect Luck to continue the same fumble rate. I expect him to get progressively better and then plateau...just like every other Pro Bowl caliber QB out there not named Tom Brady.

So now we are able to tease out who's a cheater and who's not based solely on the degree of improvement?

I never said that and you're getting this off track.

Brady was caught cheating. He was caught cheating based on other teams stating that the balls they were using were severely underinflated and then the Wells report confirming it.

The question is now 'How much does a deflated football help?'

With the Patriots and Brady, it seemed to help quite a bit.

It would be like if somebody thought I was cheating on a test using a trick calculator, but they couldn't quite prove if the calculator was tricked up and then when my test score came out, it was astronomically better than all of the tests I've taken over the years. That improvement would only further draw suspicion based on the suspicion of the trick calculator.

The real problem is you can't just exclude dome teams because it makes the numbers look better. Atlanta did not get the dome advantage prior to Matt Ryan, and Indy has not had the dome advantage since Peyton Manning. Whatever difference a dome does make is significantly less important than who the QB is. This is entirely obvious.

You can absolutely exclude dome teams because there is a correlation of fumble rate and indoor teams versus outdoor teams. A correlation doesn't mean that every single dome team will fumble less than an outdoor team and vice versa. But, you can mathematically determine the strength of a correlation and that will prove with math that in all likelihood a dome team will fumble less than an outdoor team.

What we see from the Patriots is that they were at about the league average for outdoor teams' fumble rate up until 2007 and then they became not only enormously better at not fumbling...but the very best for outdoor teams by an enormous margin.

And it all just started to happen in 2007 when McNally became employed there and Brady had lobbied for the rule change.

If Brady was 1, 2 or 3 years into his career as a starter, then it would be tough to prove whether the improvement was due to a natural progression as a QB. But, he had already gone thru that progression and then went thru another progression that made him historically great. The evidence is already there that he cheated, the second progression is right in the same time he was able to deflate footballs with McNally's help and it just indicates that by cheating, he did gain a sizeable advantage.





YR

 

[burmafrd]

those who think this is no big deal are as usual blind to reality. When the difference between victory and defeat is often razor thin even the slightest edge can made a difference. Do you doubters really think BB and Brady would be cheating if they did not think it gave them an edge?

 

[Miller]

OK, I'm giving my opinion once and people can rip me or whatever. But I'm basing it on the reality of the investigation, what has been said, etc

First of all, this Yahoo piece on 5 Reasons the NFL got it wrong is a very good piece

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-s...ate-gate-punishment-dead-wrong-233900364.html

Secondly, I'm not a Pats fan. So don't pull that junk with me. Die-hard Cowboys since 1975 and though I have respected the Pats, Brady, etc over the years, I wouldn't say my opinions support them. It's more I don't trust a league who makes up random punishments/systems as they go.

So here is my issue...and its not with Brady and the Pats, but the NFL and the Commish

1) There are many ex-QBs..Jeff Blake, Brett Favre,etc...that have said that the ball issue has been happening for a long time. Minnesota got caught warming balls this year. Does that make it right? No. But the reality of this is the offense in question is a misdemeanor(to steal Dan Wetzel's phrasing). So when the league was told by the Colts before the game that they thought the Pats deflated balls, they should have stepped in and warned them and the story would have been done.Seriously, we would not have to be dragged through this if Goodell did his job to start. End of Story.

2) The Game and Wells Reports. I think the game/report is a joke. First of all it had a pre-determined outcome and the league wrote it up to blast the Pats. If you don't think this then you didn't read the report well enough and just aren't being objective. One of the most damming things hidden in the report was regarding which needles they tested the balls with because both needles gave different readings. When the ref was asked which one he used he said he was pretty sure it was the long, crooked one (which would have helped Pats case), yet the league pushed him like he was in interrogation and eventually his story changed. Also, Brady isn't under any legal process where he needed to give up his phone, no matter what Wells promised him. It's his personal phone and its legally smart not to hand it over. Not only that but to me that smelled of desperation because if Brady had been writing the equipment guys, wouldn't they have it on their phones vs their Three Stooges texts to each other? Think about that. Wells was saying he was confident the texts were hard proof but there were none from Brady regarding letting air out. In fact Brady said he liked his balls low....12.5. Many QBs have said game balls can be rock hard no matter the testing. So doesn't being the "Deflator" make just as much sense for a guy deflating balls from rock hard to 12.5 vs. "make it illegal." I mean there are so many arguments that a law school student could have torn up the Wells Report

3) Punishment. And this is where Cowboy fans and other teams should be concerned. Especially since Kraft was a buddy. 4 Games, $1 million, draft picks. The letter basically says the league was being harsh because of the Pats past. That's a joke. Brady didn't videotape practices or games so doubling down on him is dumb. They were already punished. Also, Wells got defensive and on his soap box regarding his report. It was allegedly the proof. Yet it completely cleared Kraft and Belichick. So why are they getting fined and losing picks when the report blamed 2 stooges and kindof/sorta Brady? They were punished in the past so now you can double dip? Goodell and the league...., with Rice, this and the last 3 years....scare me more than the Pats. They are arbitrarily making up laws as they go and then they get over turned. So we went from #1..a warning..to millions on a report and felony style punishment for air in a football.

In conclusion, this should have been over pre-Colts game. If not, then Brady should have gotten an immediate 1 game suspension that was appealable. In the end we got an overzealous Commish making things 50 times worse because his feelings got hurt.

As for "did it make a difference." I think minimal and all teams and QBs like their balls a certain way. It's why you've barely heard a word from current QBs. You are gullible if you think differently. Brady had better stats in the second half and SB without the issues. It does beg the question why do it then but to me its comfort. I don't like cheating but I also am not going t act like the Cowboys and others haven't done a ton of stuff get an edge. Heck, we my have had a HOF WR playing SBs with nose candy and its brushed under the rug. His cussing, post NFC title rant on live TV might be proof enough. It's why I don't throw stones.

 

[BringBackThatOleTimeBoys]

When asked why I'm not a fan, the homers on many threads like this at CowboysZone.

I was reconsidering.

 

[burmafrd]

OK, I'm giving my opinion once and people can rip me or whatever. But I'm basing it on the reality of the investigation, what has been said, etc

First of all, this Yahoo piece on 5 Reasons the NFL got it wrong is a very good piece

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-s...ate-gate-punishment-dead-wrong-233900364.html

Secondly, I'm not a Pats fan. So don't pull that junk with me. Die-hard Cowboys since 1975 and though I have respected the Pats, Brady, etc over the years, I wouldn't say my opinions support them. It's more I don't trust a league who makes up random punishments/systems as they go.

So here is my issue...and its not with Brady and the Pats, but the NFL and the Commish

1) There are many ex-QBs..Jeff Blake, Brett Favre,etc...that have said that the ball issue has been happening for a long time. Minnesota got caught warming balls this year. Does that make it right? No. But the reality of this is the offense in question is a misdemeanor(to steal Dan Wetzel's phrasing). So when the league was told by the Colts before the game that they thought the Pats deflated balls, they should have stepped in and warned them and the story would have been done.Seriously, we would not have to be dragged through this if Goodell did his job to start. End of Story.

2) The Game and Wells Reports. I think the game/report is a joke. First of all it had a pre-determined outcome and the league wrote it up to blast the Pats. If you don't think this then you didn't read the report well enough and just aren't being objective. One of the most damming things hidden in the report was regarding which needles they tested the balls with because both needles gave different readings. When the ref was asked which one he used he said he was pretty sure it was the long, crooked one (which would have helped Pats case), yet the league pushed him like he was in interrogation and eventually his story changed. Also, Brady isn't under any legal process where he needed to give up his phone, no matter what Wells promised him. It's his personal phone and its legally smart not to hand it over. Not only that but to me that smelled of desperation because if Brady had been writing the equipment guys, wouldn't they have it on their phones vs their Three Stooges texts to each other? Think about that. Wells was saying he was confident the texts were hard proof but there were none from Brady regarding letting air out. In fact Brady said he liked his balls low....12.5. Many QBs have said game balls can be rock hard no matter the testing. So doesn't being the "Deflator" make just as much sense for a guy deflating balls from rock hard to 12.5 vs. "make it illegal." I mean there are so many arguments that a law school student could have torn up the Wells Report

3) Punishment. And this is where Cowboy fans and other teams should be concerned. Especially since Kraft was a buddy. 4 Games, $1 million, draft picks. The letter basically says the league was being harsh because of the Pats past. That's a joke. Brady didn't videotape practices or games so doubling down on him is dumb. They were already punished. Also, Wells got defensive and on his soap box regarding his report. It was allegedly the proof. Yet it completely cleared Kraft and Belichick. So why are they getting fined and losing picks when the report blamed 2 stooges and kindof/sorta Brady? They were punished in the past so now you can double dip? Goodell and the league...., with Rice, this and the last 3 years....scare me more than the Pats. They are arbitrarily making up laws as they go and then they get over turned. So we went from #1..a warning..to millions on a report and felony style punishment for air in a football.

In conclusion, this should have been over pre-Colts game. If not, then Brady should have gotten an immediate 1 game suspension that was appealable. In the end we got an overzealous Commish making things 50 times worse because his feelings got hurt.

As for "did it make a difference." I think minimal and all teams and QBs like their balls a certain way. It's why you've barely heard a word from current QBs. You are gullible if you think differently. Brady had better stats in the second half and SB without the issues. It does beg the question why do it then but to me its comfort. I don't like cheating but I also am not going t act like the Cowboys and others haven't done a ton of stuff get an edge. Heck, we my have had a HOF WR playing SBs with nose candy and its brushed under the rug. His cussing, post NFC title rant on live TV might be proof enough. It's why I don't throw stones.

actually you are the gullible one. Probably think OJ is still looking for the real killers. You lap up the pats bleeting like a cat with cream.

 

[burmafrd]

When asked why I'm not a fan, the homers on many threads like this at CowboysZone.

I was reconsidering.

well no one will miss you.

 

[burmafrd]

for those desperately looking for a way to let the pats and tom the cheater off the hook, one fact: there were rules and Tom and the Pats broke them. End of story. Except for those trying so hard to excuse them.

 

[Miller]

actually you are the gullible one. Probably think OJ is still looking for the real killers. You lap up the pats bleeting like a cat with cream.

What didn't you get about "I'm not a Pats fan" and "I think Brady is guilty and should be punished?" If RIF hasn't taught you how to read objectively and to see these things without attacking, why come on a message board? I'm going to start a new campaign "Stop Caveman Posting." For 5 cents a day you too can teach a caveman poster to read logically and to understand some people agree with your premise, even though it might come from a different direction.

 

[SkinsandTerps]

Brady's press conference after the fact implicated him more.
He said that he approves all of the footballs and they were perfect. He said he likes them at 12.5.
Then he says he can't tell the difference ? He says he doesn't want anyone to touch them after they are perfect.
That makes zero sense.

He's lying, and it's pretty blatant.
I'll put up the link if you would like of his press conference.

I saw one where Brunell, B. Dawkins, and The Bus said...basically that's bull.

 

[WPBCowboysFan]

Ok, then go by the Superbowl. Im also going to go out on a limb here and say that Brady has a great year next year with properly inflated balls. LOL

Cmon, this whole inflate thing is ridiculous. Its about breaking a rule. And talk about a minor rule? Honestly, its foolish.

CowboyRoy sounds a lot like Rogah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

How many screen names does Rogah have?