Alpharius wrote:
the NFL bungled this from the start and - here we are.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Haha, guess I deserve that. It's the way I feel though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kronk wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but I think Brady is going to serve all 4 games of that suspension.

Well if you heard that from ESPN - I would completely disregard it. Their coverage of the whole thing has been pretty biased towards the NFL's decision here - pretty sure they are required to.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Haha, guess I deserve that. It's the way I feel though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kronk wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but I think Brady is going to serve all 4 games of that suspension.

Well if you heard that from ESPN - I would completely disregard it. Their coverage of the whole thing has been pretty biased towards the NFL's decision here - pretty sure they are required to.

Brady GOAT. Dont mess with Brady

So glad I can watch football this season.

 Alpharius wrote:
That's a bit too Tin Foil a theory for me!

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Haha, guess I deserve that. It's the way I feel though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kronk wrote:
I'm not a lawyer, but I think Brady is going to serve all 4 games of that suspension.

Well if you heard that from ESPN - I would completely disregard it. Their coverage of the whole thing has been pretty biased towards the NFL's decision here - pretty sure they are required to.

Brady GOAT. Dont mess with Brady

So glad I can watch football this season.

What do you want to bet the Patriots have a lot more bad calls this year going against them then any other team in the NFL? Goodell isn't going to sit down and take it. He will continue to make himself look like a donkey cave until the end.

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
Looks like Tebow will make the Eagles roster after they traded Matt Barkley to the Cards for a conditional 7th rounder (Barkley has to be on the roster for at least 6 games)

 Alpharius wrote:
Good lord....

Did the rest of the league switch their team colors to green too?



Anyway, the Pats also have a pretty good pass rush this year - finally!

So there's that too!

 Alpharius wrote:
Good lord....

Did the rest of the league switch their team colors to green too?

 Alpharius wrote:
Er, no - he got fined for taping the opposing sideline from a location where you weren't allowed to do it.

He thought he had wiggle room on that rule, he was wrong and they got hit hard.

And ever since then, bitter, short-sighted and possibly envious fans, owners, players, coaches, league officials, etc. have been jumping at bogey-men.

The distraction from all of this mostly imaginary crap has probably cost more teams more victories than any (alleged) thing the Patriots have ever done.

Or not done!

Some of the Steelers' defensive coaches remain convinced that a deep touchdown pass from Brady to Deion Branch in the January 2005 AFC Championship Game, which was won by the Patriots 41-27, came from stolen signals because Pittsburgh hadn't changed its signals all year, sources say, and the two teams had played a game in the regular season that Walsh told investigators he believes was taped. "They knew the signals, so they knew when it went in what the coverage was and how to attack it," says a former Steelers coach. "I've had a couple of guys on my teams from New England, and they've told me those things."

ROGER GOODELL, ABOUT THIS STORY

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell appeared on ESPN's Mike & Mike show minutes after this story published. When asked about the connections made between Spygate and Deflategate, he said he had not yet had a chance to read this story but:

"I am not aware of any connection between the Spygate procedures and these procedures here. There is no connection in my mind between these two incidents."

 helgrenze wrote:
FFL

Draft set? first game is this Thurs, Pitt vs NE.
MIGHT have some interest in this game.

 Alpharius wrote:
Coming from a Steelers fan - this is hilarious!

Belichick knows at Saturday night meetings who will be inactive and active for its opponents during home games. “It’s not clear how Belichick knows. But he does,” the report says.

Armen Zee wrote:
I have heard other teams say New England went through their trash, say New England is bugging their locker room, say New England is filming their practices with iPhones (imagine the quality! Lol!)

The bottom line is New England is just a better team than most of these other teams. 13 years of dominance and six Super Bowls appearances in the Belichick era being the proof in the pudding.

Instead of saying to themselves, "Man, we gotta figure out how to get better. We gotta figure out how to be like New England.", all of these other teams say, "No, they kick our asses year in and year out. They MUST be cheating. They MUST be going through our trash, bugging our locker room, filming our practices with iPhones. It can't just be that we suck. Can it?"

Sounds like New England is achieving exactly what they want to achieve - getting into their opponents heads!

 gorgon wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Coming from a Steelers fan - this is hilarious!

But only a fraction as hilarious as watching Pats fans TWIST THEMSELVES INTO KNOTS trying to defend cheating, only because "GO PATS!"

From the management down to the fans, there's LOTS be admired there for sure! LOL!

Lemme know when you get to six, BTW.

It's been a rough stretch for the NFL's public image, and former St. Louis Rams coach Mike Martz is the latest to pile on.

The 64-year-old came off the top rope from a cabin in Idaho.

Just when it seemed like Deflategate had finally gone flat, the Patriots' latest scandal managed to find new life AND link itself to another mess born of the team's all-around unethicalness. Deflategate, meet Spygate. Oh, boy.

ESPN on Tuesday published an exhaustive investigation that says the Patriots' Spygate scandal — you remember, the mess that leaked out when Bill Belichick's corner-cutting resulted in a Patriots' video assistant getting caught illegally filming the New York Jets during a week-one game in 2007 — went deeper than we thought.

So deep, ESPN reports, that league investigators discovered the Patriots kept a library of scouting material, opponents' play calls included. This stash reportedly held information gathered from the rogue recording of opponents' signals between 2000-2007. That's new information that Goodell probably didn't want us to know. While he handed out hefty fines and docked a draft pick, he reportedly ordered that the hard evidence from the library be destroyed.

The big-picture takeaway is this: Goodell tried to hammer the Patriots for Deflategate because the NFL owners who are also his bosses believed the Patriots got off relatively easy for Spygate.

But back to Martz, whose footnote in the 18-page report is going to stick in the craw of Rams' fans forever.

Think any of those nuked videos or shredded notes helped the Patriots beat the Rams 20-17 in Super Bowl XXXVI?

If you didn't already, you will probably ask yourself that every time you see a replay of Adam Vinatieri's game-winning field goal from 2002.

Sounds like Martz does the same.

"It was hard to swallow because I always felt something happened but I didn't know what it was and I couldn't prove it anyway," Martz told ESPN in July, during an interview in his summer cabin in the Idaho mountains. "Even to this day, I think something happened."

This isn't an unnamed source hinting at foul play. This is a former coach calling out the Patriots on the record. The NFL should be terrified of guys like Martz. He has nothing to lose.

Call it sour grapes if you want. Or, call it the truth from a guy who no longer has to cater to The Shield.

If the Patriots had Rams-specific intel in their now-empty library, we'll probably never know. But the report goes on to mention a more-concrete reason St. Louis should feel at least a little cheated.

Depending on whom you believe, the Patriots either did or did not film the Rams' Super Bowl walk-through before the big game.

Former Patriots videographer Matt Walsh claimed he and at least three other videographers watched the Rams' final practice, then reported back some valuable information, like the fact that Rams running back Marshall Faulk was returning kickoffs and the addition of new redzone plays. But Walsh can't produce hard evidence, something the Patriots cling to. Maybe it didn't make it out of the library.

But wait. There's also the hint of a cover-up.

Martz, who coached the Rams from 2000-05, also told ESPN that Goodell called him in 2008 and asked him to provide a statement saying he was satisfied with the league's look into Spygate. Arlen Specter, a senator from Pennsylvania, was calling for a congressional investigation. Martz, canned by the Rams in 2006, was the offensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers.

"He (Goodell) told me, 'The league doesn't need this. We're asking you to come out with a couple lines exonerating us and saying we did our due diligence,'" Martz told ESPN.

Martz agreed to release a statement through the 49ers.

"I was stunned at Matt Walsh’s allegation that he was on the sideline in New England Patriots apparel during our walk-thru," read one part. "I find that insulting, disturbing and a slap in the face to both our team security and NFL security, who both do outstanding jobs. I promise you that if he was on the sideline, he was not in New England Patriots apparel because he would have been identified."

Now that Martz is out of coaching, his tune has changed. He balked when ESPN reintroduced his statement from 2008.

"It shocked me," Martz told ESPN. "It appears embellished quite a bit — some lines I know I didn't write. Who changed it? I don't know."

Don't worry.

I'm sure the NFL will get to the bottom of it.

 whembly wrote:


St. Louis fans are talking about (kiddingly of course) to load up the vans and head to foxboros to get "our" 2002 SB trophy back.