The important question is WHY the original story was pulled. We all think we have a good guess -- that its assumption about who would win turned out wrong -- but we really don't know.
If it was pulled because of the final score, that's weird for all the reasons mentioned.
It might have been pulled, though, for other reasons. Such as inaccuracies about the Broncos situation or the Pash conference call. That's a different matter. We really don't know. This would be different. If the NFL's lawyer called, this might be a different situation.
There is even another explanation that, frankly, to me makes the most sense. I believe it is possible that Rhoden wrote several versions of the same story, with the idea that which one the paper posted at the end of the day would depend on what the result was. There is nothing wrong with this. Well, there is a little bit -- most journalists say it is wrong if you imply that you are responding to actual events with things you wrote before the game. Someone got in trouble for that recently -- Bob Ryan? Tony Kornheiser. Don't remember. But that's different from saying, before a game, "If A happens, this will be my theme, and if B happens, this will be my theme, and I'll write a paragraph to insert about the actual result once the contest is over." My best guess is that this is exactly what happened here, and the story that got posted was Rhoden's if-the-Jets-win story, but it somehow accidentally got posted before the game.
