Brady will be playing week one.

I heard that the question on whether Brady will play or not is putting a serious strain on the coaching staff's ability to game-plan properly for the first few games of the year. Has anybody considered that this is also not fair to the Steelers who also would like to know if they have to face Brady or not?

 

Yes it will most definitely makes a difference. Just plan for a whole lot of dinking and dunking. Seems to be the way they win games.

 

I just hope they don't go in there expecting an automatic win if he's not playing. We should prepare like we're facing a top qb every week regardless of who we are facing. With the youth movement we have going on these guys need to realize that in the NFL there are no gimme's.

 

It won't matter because Silverback is coming to kill whoever is behind center hehe

 

I was reading some of the comments in the thread recently and I wanted to throw something out there because I think there is some confusion. Now I'm not 100 % sure of what I am about to say but it is what I am getting from all this.

First, lets get over the idea of how badly the NFL botched the investigation. Yes they didn't cover themselves with glory in handling it however once they established that there were inconsistencies with the game balls the Patriots used and then had evidence the two employee's may have tampered with them then in the language used by hte Wells report it became more probable than not that they had in fact tampered with them and had been for some time. The Patriot's trying to dispute the science and claim that atmospheric changes, 300 pound linemen falling on it and so forth contributed to the inconsistencies are all just them trying to make it seem like nothing illegal went on. Had they not found text message using terms like "the Deflator", I'll give you a needle, or discussing Tom's anger over the PSI of the game balls, all those reasoning the Pats gave would have seemed plausible.

Second, again by wording the report in such a way as to say it was more plausible than not that Brady was aware they are saying that given the evidence in hand it appears that thses two guys were acting with some sort knowledge being known by Brady. Their text messages were enough to suggest it was being done with his knowledge and with some quid pro quo going on. All this would have again been proven wrong had Tom Brady proved that he didn't receive any communication from them.

Thirdly and what I feel is the most important part here and it is getting lost. Tom Brady isn't suspended for tampering with footballs. Troy Vincent and even Roger Goodell were very careful in how they worded the letters to Brady he is suspended under the league's conduct policy. The first letter cited failure to comply with the investigation and not allowing the independent investigator to view text messages from the two employees. Brady lying about knowing them furthered clouded the issue. In his appeal the revelation that he destroyed his phone prior to being asked for the messages by the Wells investigation further damages his credibility and casts even more of a shadow upon the shield. Now when the NFLPA and the League adopted the new CBA that gave Goodell some very broad criteria when it came to the powers he was given, when he set up the new code of conduct it gave him even broader guidelines in which to punish those who do not uphold the integrity of the shield. Brady's camp is arguing that there is no precedent in this case but that isn't true. The league already established with bountygate that ignorance is not an excuse and that the coach is responsible for the actions of the team and his staff. They suspended Sean Peyton an entire year not because he participate in the bounty program but because he failed to know what was happening on his staff and that tarnished the shield. So when they say more probable than not that Brady had some awareness of these two planning or actually letting the air out of the footballs that begins the process. By not cooperating fully that further degrades the public's trust in the NFL, by lying and getting found out it adds to it, the continued fight and the revelation of facts such as destroying the cellphone again adds more to that negative. So while yes this case in about deflating footballs, Brady's punishment as they have set it up, is not so much about that but his conduct under the league's code of conduct policy.

Lastly I think it is important to remember that all of these could have been avoided if Tom Brady would have went to the league of his union rep and made a request about the standards for game balls so that even if there were minimal gains that could be gotten from lower PSI both teams would have that available to them and not have it look like one team trying to gain even a perceived edge over the other without their general knowledge. IT could have been further avoided had Brady and the Patriot made every attempt to minimize the story by saying we may have done something wrong we apologize and didn't do it in an effort to cheat but we will take the punishment and learn from the mistake. By continuing to fight this they are in effect making it worse because it tarnishes the shield and gives the commissioner and the league more ammo in which to act in order to protect the game, its owners and its players.

 

I'd love to see Brady turn to run the other direction when seeing James only to get smashed by Heyward

 

I never want to root for anyone to get hurt...but how ironic would it be if he wins this court case, gets to play week 1...then James Harrison knocks him out for the year with an injury I bet he will wish he manned up and admitted he's a cheater then.

 

Or not go the other way and just have good ole Harrison meet him .. haha.. Harrison is running out of time to wreck Marshas career

 

Hopefully!

 

That's how the Patriots beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, the Seahawks couldn't stop them.

 

I think the whole thing is stupid and should never have gotten out of control.
Suspended 4 games for deflating ballz.

There's comedy in life. Who writes this stuff?

 

true

Goodell should be suspended by the balls for deflating the game

 

They stopped them as much as they needed to. Seattle's offense lost that game on their own. 3 plays from the 1 with Marshawn Lynch in the backfield and New England's run defense incapable of stopping him. Seattle's defense did well enough to win. What they did on offense was inexcusable.

 

It seems from the opening statements I read that their defense seemed to be "Well he didn't LITERALLY say deflate the balls so he's innocent". Even though in all likelihood he strongly "suggested" it. Their opening appeal to goodell had them saying that it wasn't Tom's fault that it happened and he was being held accountable for only being "generally aware". They said "what if he was generally aware of a teammate using roids? would he then be held accountable for that too?" That's a really weak sauce argument and you'd think with his wallet he could get some lawyers to argue better than that.

 

I think Wilson would have gotten an even BETTER deal if not for that play call on the one. That one single play probably literally cost him a few million at least.

 

and it cost Lynch millions too
since they didn't run it with him
FO prolly said DON'T WHAT EVER YOU DO DON'T

 

You could point to any play in any game and cite it as a reason for the win or loss, and you wouldn't necessarily be wrong. Like, "If we'd gotten a touchdown instead of a field goal at the end of the 3rd quarter we wouldn't have needed to ___ and so that's what did it." But sometimes all those previous plays are overshadowed, and that's the case here. If Seattle hands it to Lynch, they win. He would have to pull a Bettis-fumble for them to lose, and I just don't see it happening in that situation. I think he puts both hands on the ball and plows straight ahead. If they just do a straight-ahead run (no fancy tosses or something) I literally put their chances of winning at 99%, probably 95% on that very play.

I'd compare it to some other crazy last-play games. Take the music-city mircale. Yeah, if the Bills had done better throughout the game they'd have won, and if the Titans had done better throughout the game they wouldn't have had to win on that play, but come on... it really came down to that play. All Buffalo had to do was not completely butcher that kickoff - both the kick and the coverage - and they'd have won. I put that game on the kickoff coverage team (and coach).

 

Not every game. But some games, sure. And you wouldn't be getting the whole story, but suppose a team is down by 1 and as time expires the field goal is headed straight between the uprights and a seagull smacks it wide. Or suppose as time expires a running back is about to run untouched into the end zone and he literally has a heart attack and falls down at the 1 yard line. Isn't it fair to say they lost because that happened? Of COURSE you could say, "Well if ___ happened at these other 500 points in the game, they wouldn't have needed those points anyway." That running back probably had other runs in the game that weren't touchdowns. If he'd scored a touchdown on any 2 of those other runs, they'd have won even with the heart attack.

But I think the passage of time is important. Maybe this is my illogical side, but sometimes it's crystal clear the biggest reason a team lost, and I can't stand the "Well they should have overcome that earlier" talk. You CAN say Seattle lost because they called that stupid pass. You could also say they lost because of a select series of plays throughout the game. Obviously. That just bugs me. I know why they lost.

 

Yeah! That's ONE way to manage your salary cap! LOL!!!

 

I disagree about Seattle defense, they were supposed to be so great and Brady had over 300 yds and 4 TDs. Their secondary couldn't cover Julian Edelman he's not a elite WR. Yeah their offense blew with that int in the endzone, but compare the way their defense played against the Broncos the year before to the loss to the Patriots.