Ray's investigative sources;
My sources:
The Official Deflategate Report AKA The Wells Report
United States Court of Appeals 2nd Circuit
LOL...
Bill Belichick accepts job with UNC
- Thread starter MrChadRico
- Start date
My sources:
The Official Deflategate Report AKA The Wells Report
United States Court of Appeals 2nd Circuit
LOL...
Ray R
Club Member
As memory serves, there was a published follow-up report that was carried in many of the sports rags which included interviews with the refs who did the testing. I really wish that I had kept a copy of that report, but at the time it was a "hot topic" and got a lot of media attention.
Wasn't the lawsuit by Brady related to the NFL commissioners' getting his hands on Brady's phone?
Your memory isn't serving you well Ray.
In the Wells report I posted they DID interview the Refs. What you read were likely just sports site opinions, assumptions or conjecture,
The lawsuit from Brady was an attempt to overturn the 4 game suspension, aspects of the Wells report were entered in as part of the Official record. The suspension was originally overturned but the NFL appealed it and won the appeal.
Just for you Ray...
In the Wells report I posted they DID interview the Refs. What you read were likely just sports site opinions, assumptions or conjecture,
The lawsuit from Brady was an attempt to overturn the 4 game suspension, aspects of the Wells report were entered in as part of the Official record. The suspension was originally overturned but the NFL appealed it and won the appeal.
Just for you Ray...
One thing to keep in mind:
BB was coaching in 16 game seasons, and even a 17 game season or two.
Shula coached many 14 game seasons, and I'd have to look, but maybe even some 12 game seasons early in Baltimore. BB definitely coached in a higher average games per season than Shula, giving him more opportunities for wins.
Had all of Shula's seasons been 16 game seasons, he might have another 20 + wins or so on his total and the overall totals wouldn't look so close.
Last edited:
Aqua Marino (UK)
Active Roster
Can't believe part of the deal includes handing the reins over to Billy Ray when he's done.
Ray R
Club Member
Thanks for the correction.
I do remember a conflict between the commissioner trying to get Brady to turn over his phone and an ensuing court case at about that time.
Ray R
Club Member
FYI
I just found this, and while it isn't the report I remember, it does touch on some of the points that I do remember in the report I referred to in my earlier post. I've "bolded" the areas that address the kind of information that I had remembered reading almost 10 years ago.
I just want you to know I didn't make that stuff up.
What really happened during Deflategate? Five years later, the NFL's 'scandal' aged poorly
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Kevin Seifert, ESPN Staff Writer - Jan 18, 2020, 07:30 AM ET
Hey, baseball world: We here on the NFL side are sorry to see your game engulfed in a cheating scandal. It's truly awful to know that the Houston Astros swindled their way to the 2017 World Series title. But I've got to laugh and remind you that five years ago today, the NFL produced a scandal that was chess to your checkers.
Deflategate was a Jedi mind trick to your multiplication tables. It was HD digital to your analog. In its zeal to preserve the perception of credible outcomes, the NFL scandalized itself with an investigation that produced far more suspicion, ill will and accusations of impropriety than the original allegations themselves.
At its core, Deflategate suggested that the New England Patriots used an illegal process for lowering the inflation of game footballs at the behest of quarterback Tom Brady, who preferred the grip of softer balls. The NFL thought it found proof during a surprise and unprecedented inflation check at halftime of the 2014 AFC Championship Game, a 45-7 drubbing of the Indianapolis Colts. It then spent upward of $22 million over the course of two years to investigate, litigate and discipline Brady and the organization.
At best, it was a relatively minor rules violation that no rational person would link to the Patriots' victory two weeks later in Super Bowl XLIX. At worst, Deflategate was a retroactive framing of the league's most successful franchise and a future Hall of Fame quarterback, a clumsy and forgettable endeavor and an unfortunate reminder that the NFL's standard for discipline demands only that an event was "more probable than not" to have occurred. Brady ultimately served a four-game suspension because the NFL believed he was "generally aware" of the scheme.
The Astros' cheating scandal has proved tidy by comparison. It began in November, when former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers explained how the team used video cameras to steal signs and communicate them to batters. In swift order, nearly everyone involved acknowledged, or at least accepted, the basic veracity of the story. Ten weeks later, baseball suspended Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch and fined the Astros $5 million, the maximum allowed under baseball's constitution. Astros owner Jim Crane accepted the discipline and promptly fired Luhnow and Hinch. Former Astros bench coach Alex Cora lost his job as manager of the Boston Red Sox, and former Astros player Carlos Beltran agreed to step away from his job as the New York Mets' manager.
Additional information could add to the fallout. But if anything, the Astros got off easy for measures that could have substantively contributed to a championship. Crane retained ownership, the franchise kept its World Series title and none of the players involved faced discipline.
NFL PrimeTime continues this postseason with extended highlights and analysis following the conclusion of each day's playoff games. Watch on ESPN+The Patriots? They paid dearly for a far less consequential allegation, in part because the NFL considered them repeat cheaters after the 2007 Spygate affair.
In this case, however, the Patriots denied nearly every aspect of the NFL's allegations, including Brady's involvement, and took extraordinary steps to defend themselves. That effort included a website to dispute the NFL's Wells Report on the scandal, one that included multiple scientists pointing out that footballs can deflate naturally based on weather conditions.
The Patriots even submitted an amicus brief on behalf of Brady, who filed a federal lawsuit against the league to overturn his suspension, straddling the line between NFL stakeholder and whistleblower. (Brady got his suspension overturned in 2015 but ultimately lost on appeal and served the punishment in 2016.)
Yet when it was all over, no one could say for sure if Deflategate actually happened.
A reasonable person could be left thinking that the investigation itself was the true scandal.
The Wells Report was based largely on a series of text messages from an equipment assistant who referred to himself as "The Deflator," and the unexplained pregame detour of a locker room attendant who brought the game balls into a bathroom with him before the game.
There was no direct evidence that the equipment assistant removed air from the footballs, or that Brady asked him to do it.
And the halftime inflation measurement was a rushed and haphazard effort, one that would never pass scientific scrutiny to confirm accuracy.
Tom Brady initially had his Deflategate suspension overturned in 2015 but served it in 2016 after losing his appeal. Andrew Burton/Getty Images
In the end, it is nothing more than an opinion to suggest that it was "more probable than not" that Deflategate happened. In the terms of advanced statistics, the NFL was saying there was a 51% probability that Deflategate occurred but a 100% necessity to issue discipline. It's not outlandish to think that someone connected with the Patriots might have tried to help Brady, or that Brady had tacitly accepted that help, but there's no direct evidence of it.
And when an MIT professor explained that weather conditions could do the same thing, based on the ideal gas law, who could argue? The NFL wouldn't have known either way, because it did not regularly record pounds-per-square-inch readings to that point. For all we know, football deflation occurred naturally every week.
The ensuing rule changes only further undermined the investigation and punishment. They brought structure to pregame measurements, game ball security and compliance, a tacit acknowledgment that there was little objective basis to the 2014 readings.
The shaky connections and the preposterous conclusions of Deflategate have allowed it to slip quietly from the NFL consciousness. The legacy of Deflategate is the complete and utter lack of one, other than the brief entrance of the ideal gas law into the football lexicon -- and as grist to limit the benefit of the doubt in the ongoing investigation into the Patriots' illegal videotaping last month from the Cincinnati Bengals' press box.
The league has never released the results of tests on football air pressure, nor acknowledged a single violation in the years since. While Major League Baseball should be expected to institute major efforts to curb illegal sign-stealing, the NFL has left Deflategate to stand alone as an unintended example of what happens when you jump too soon into a rabbit's hole. If you're an angry baseball fan who thinks the game's leaders haven't been vigilant enough about potential cases of cheating, well, let us in the NFL world issue this warning: Be careful what you wish for.
Five mostly quiet years later, I'd like to say the NFL learned a lesson. But sometimes a larger scope is necessary. Five years before Deflategate, the NFL's championship weekend gave us another "gate." The accusation: New Orleans Saints players stood to gain financially if they could injure Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre during the 2009 NFC Championship Game. The two-year investigation into Bountygate contained so many holes that retired commissioner Paul Tagliabue, brought in to handle appeals and clean up the mess, vacated the discipline of four players and sharply criticized what he called a "contaminated" investigation.
So we'll reserve judgment on whether the NFL has moved past its phase of incendiary investigations. It could just be on the five-year plan, and if that's the case, keep your head on a swivel this weekend.
KevInMotion
Running @ 24 FPS
HA! Where's Miami going to go, AAC? Conference USA? Sunbelt?
They definitly would not succeed in the SEC or BIG XII
You didn't make it up Ray, someone else did ; )
The Official and Legal accounts of the event I posted, everything else is opinion really...
Why? You’ll have the best defense in the ACC.As a Tarheel I absolutely hate life right now....
2 decades of life despising someone for years of defeat has a lingering effect.
As far as best defense in the ACC?
Ray R
Club Member
So far, so good.
At this point I feel someone's opinion is limiting their evaluation of the facts.
My reference to tire pressures and cold vs warm weather is a commonly observed phenomena of physical science that is a valid direct comparison to football levels of inflation. It doesn't take a guy with a PHD in Physics to know and understand that.
The FACT is that the NFL wrote a new and complete set of guidelines on measuring ball inflation shortly after Deflate Gate. This is a clear acknowledgment that they had a problem that was not accounted for properly prior to Deflate Gate.
That's the fact, Jack.
I want on "Whine" before it's time. - LOL
You're right Ray, the NFL improved their ball testing policy so they could prevent TEAMS from cheating. You accused the Refs of cheating and that's just not a fact...
Now that we established that Belichik and his patriots were habitual cheaters let's hope he doesn't turn the Tar Heels into the same. Hopefully he never returns to the NFL...
Ray R
Club Member
But, but, but you have established no such thing!
You are starting to sound like a disgruntled political who's part lost an election!
Looks like the Hurricanes are flucked