an interesting network contradiction.....

Roger Goodell has essentially put his testicles in the proverbial vise. He mumbles about the integrity of the NFL, but these well timed leaks disparage any credibility that the league has...

ESPN has become their errand boys to keep stoking these flames, if I were Mr. Kraft I would be mightily pissed over the whole way this has been handled.

IMO Goodell has nothing on the Pats, that is significant.. so instead of proceeding, he and his minions will continue to leak information that even though is non-consequential, to demean this franchise..

ESPN has become the news, rather than reporting the news..

PatsWickedPissah said:

Ken, NFL.com is simply overwhelmed & consumed with covering the JETS tampering story with all its late breaking details.

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Cute, but an actual thought just occurred to me. Greg Rosenthal (no relation) is an unabashed Pats fan who is the editor and boss of all the Around the League reporters. Maybe he looked and the story, determined that it really wasn't worth reporting and it was truly just an attempt to smear the Pats and chose not to run with it.

Personally I'd like to se some network to actually attack it for the smear it really is, but that's unlikely. Rosenthal probably isn't high enough on the food chain at the NFL Network to actually kill a bogus story, but its all I can think of at this point.

I watched Boomer and Carton this morning on CBSSN from about 6:20 til 9:20 and didn't hear them mention it. Maybe they did right away at 6:00, but I was pleasantly surprised not to hear it.

FWIW, Curran said today on WEEI that catching the Pats deflating footballs has been Kensil's "white whale" and he has been trying to catch the Pats doing this for a long time.

The funny thing is that this story is all over the place. This story contradicts ESPN's own story about all the balls being at least 2 PSI under the limit. It also seems to contradict the fact that Troy Vincent admitted this whole thing started when Ryan Grigson complained that the intercepted football was deflated. Now they are saying the locker room attendent gave an ineligible football.

I also heard the ESPN reporter on WEEI say that McNally knowingly gave the unapproved football to the alternate ref. How does she know that? It could have been a mistake.

I do love the league chastising people for leaking information yet keeps on leaking information.

Honestly Ken, I don't really see much on this story anywhere so not really that surprised NFL.com has avoided it. Even PFT has said that it is just an attempt to rehash the story. I think I'm done with it.

I'd like to know why someone felt the need to leak this. It's unrelated, irrelevant, and kind of silly. Reporters weren't asking about it, so it must have been volunteered.

Of all the characters in this play, and all the leaks and people sticking needles in balls who aren't officials it's beginning to look like the only people not guilty of breaking any rules are the Patriots. Doubt the league rules permit leaking information in an investigation.

League rules...Ha! good one there! )

Rob0729 said:

FWIW, Curran said today on WEEI that catching the Pats deflating footballs has been Kensil's "white whale" and he has been trying to catch the Pats doing this for a long time.

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I'm a big Curran fan, but he needs to be more specific here. Is this speculation? Or does he have sources for that. The implication is in fact that the Patriots were doing this for a long time, but the evidence is that no man-made deflation occurred during the AFFCG. Why did Kensil ever assume wrong-doing?

Rob0729 said:

I also heard the ESPN reporter on WEEI say that McNally knowingly gave the unapproved football to the alternate ref. How does she know that? It could have been a mistake.

I do love the league chastising people for leaking information yet keeps on leaking information.

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There is so much to wonder about in these leaks. Why hasn't anyone been smart enough to ask the simple question, "If McNally gave an unapproved ball on purpose, to what end?" On the off chance that THAT ball (which was either over or under inflated no one knows) might be the one of 11 balls the Pats got to use at the perfect time., Yeah that makes sense. What are the odds of that? (less than 8%, btw)

If Curren really wanted to make some headlines for himself, he'd go after ESPN and the NFL offices as ask some of the questions we have been asking the last few weeks. Why are these leaks so orchestrated? Who is doing the leaking? Why are the leaks so contradictory? Why isn't the tampering case not being pursued? Why are there no similar leaks concerning the Atlanta "noisegate" case, or the Cleveland "textgate" case Do you have any control of your own offices, Roger? Or are you complicit in these leaks? It has to be one or the other. (I'd guess the former)

Granted he might step on some toes at ESPN and the NFL offices by doing the right thing, so maybe I'm just being naïve to think he might actually do some hard core reporting. In an ideal world, Mike Reiss might be on the verge of a career change and decide he'd like to go out on a high note and take this on. He'd get to the bottom of it. To bad he has a family to feed.

patfanken said:

There is so much to wonder about in these leaks. Why hasn't anyone been smart enough to ask the simple question, "If McNally gave an unapproved ball on purpose, to what end?"

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Curran did ask that question:

http://www.csnne.com/blog/patriots-talk/curran-latest-deflategate-nugget-isnt-very-weighty

ESPN's report makes no sense.

Curran's been asking the right questions and pointing out the hypocrisy, but he hasn't looked at the science angle, at all, which only further calls the NFL into question.

What I'd love to have is access to the all-22, which presumably answers some of these things like: where did the intercepted ball go? What caused the delay at the start of the first half? I am assuming the NFL's all-22 cuts are edited down to just the plays unfortunately.

BradyManny said:

I'm a big Curran fan, but he needs to be more specific here. Is this speculation? Or does he have sources for that. The implication is in fact that the Patriots were doing this for a long time, but the evidence is that no man-made deflation occurred during the AFFCG. Why did Kensil ever assume wrong-doing?

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Curran said he is afraid to go all in on anything because although his sources say there is absolutely to Deflategate (he implied this part), he is afraid to put his career on the line just in case they are wrong. He said he had sources on Kensil, but I don't think he is brave enough to double down and give too much information on this topic (or at least what he has given in previous reports). It seems that he knows more on these subjects than he is letting on, but not confident in the information to go public with it.

If you are monitoring the thread Prentice, sorry if I am misquoting you. But that it what I got from listening to you.

patfanken said:

There is so much to wonder about in these leaks. Why hasn't anyone been smart enough to ask the simple question, "If McNally gave an unapproved ball on purpose, to what end?" On the off chance that THAT ball (which was either over or under inflated no one knows) might be the one of 11 balls the Pats got to use at the perfect time., Yeah that makes sense. What are the odds of that? (less than 8%, btw)

If Curren really wanted to make some headlines for himself, he'd go after ESPN and the NFL offices as ask some of the questions we have been asking the last few weeks. Why are these leaks so orchestrated? Who is doing the leaking? Why are the leaks so contradictory? Why isn't the tampering case not being pursued? Why are there no similar leaks concerning the Atlanta "noisegate" case, or the Cleveland "textgate" case Do you have any control of your own offices, Roger? Or are you complicit in these leaks? It has to be one or the other. (I'd guess the former)

Granted he might step on some toes at ESPN and the NFL offices by doing the right thing, so maybe I'm just being naïve to think he might actually do some hard core reporting. In an ideal world, Mike Reiss might be on the verge of a career change and decide he'd like to go out on a high note and take this on. He'd get to the bottom of it. To bad he has a family to feed.

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As BradyManny pointed out, Curran did go after this report in his current article.

The reason why we are not hearing leaks about the other cheating cases is because no one cares. Arthur Blank basically admitted to the charges that the Falcons pumped in crowd noise and virtually all the news organizations ignored it. Unless the cheating allegations are about the Patriots, no one cares. A team could be caught intercepting the coaches to QB communications or something along that magnitude of cheating and no one will care. It is all about the Patriots. The league, the networks, and the fans hate the Patriots (or Belichick in the league and networks case).

Rob0729 said:

Curran said he is afraid to go all in on anything because although his sources say there is absolutely to Deflategate (he implied this part), he is afraid to put his career on the line just in case they are wrong. He said he had sources on Kensil, but I don't think he is brave enough to double down and give too much information on this topic (or at least what he has given in previous reports). It seems that he knows more on these subjects than he is letting on, but not confident in the information to go public with it.

If you are monitoring the thread Prentice, sorry if I am misquoting you. But that it what I got from listening to you.

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Gee, maybe Curran is principled enough to not lay stuff out there without hard evidence from multiple solid sources. That would be refreshing from a media member.

Here is a quote from the ESPN piece:

"The alternate official, Greg Yette, became suspicious when he noticed that the football McNally handed him did not have the proper markings on it, three sources said. One of those sources added that Yette found it surprising that the officials' locker room attendant was on the field, trying to hand him a ball, because officials' locker room attendants don't typically have ballhandling responsibilities during NFL games. Once McNally tried to introduce the unapproved football into the game, the source said, Yette notified the NFL's vice president of game operations, Mike Kensil, who was at the game in the press box"

So let me get this straight. Who hands the balls to the refs? Isn't it the ball boy? What does typically mean? So occasionally someone else other than the ball boy gives the ball to the ref and on whose authority would this change. If I handed a ball to the ref and I wasn't the person authorized to do so, wouldn't the ref just say "Hey moron, get back to your seat". Would I believe for one second that I was going to be able to introduce a non-conforming football to the game? I would be a bigger idiot than I already am to think that. And yet, the official then contacted Kensil. Why Kensil? Why not the head ref?

Although the story is being spun about the intent of the Locker room guy, doesn't the quote above just beg for questions about the apparent lack of understood league protocols?

The again its one of those "sources" stories so who knows how accurate this is but why let facts disrupt a good controversy.

Rob0729 said:

Curran said he is afraid to go all in on anything because although his sources say there is absolutely to Deflategate (he implied this part), he is afraid to put his career on the line just in case they are wrong. He said he had sources on Kensil, but I don't think he is brave enough to double down and give too much information on this topic (or at least what he has given in previous reports). It seems that he knows more on these subjects than he is letting on, but not confident in the information to go public with it.

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Thanks for heads up - sounds like Curran is exercising some wise discretion, the kind his colleagues are failing to use.

Of course, if he did want to go out on a limb, he could take some solace in the fact that none of his colleagues are being held accountable for being wrong on a daily basis.

Tom E. Curran @tomecurran
2 vital questions: Was the ball "introduced" by McNally to Yette a K-ball ? Was it set aside and measured for PSI? @KellyNaqiESPN

BSR said:

Here is a good take down of how stupid this newest report is: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/02/...ints-problematic-picture-of-entire-situation/

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Thank you

So, just to sum up today's real "news"

#1 ESPN now admits Mortenson's story - which fueled DeflateGate mania - was wrong and confirm the NFL's Ian Rappaport story that 11 of 12 balls were ACTUALLY within normal air temperature pressure differentials

#2 Goodell has decreed "no more leaks" from NFL offices - so of course ESPN cites FOUR sources - all of whom are likely NFL sources with knowledge of the investigation

So much for the Integrity of the Badge when the NFL office itself can't be trusted

Good Job Roger!

#3 Those sources reveal - NOTHING really except they only add confusion and inject DeflateGate back into the spotlight, and cite a "source confirmed" employee of the Patriots who handed a KICKING BALL to the official (and that's a crime why?) - and that "it is not known if" the Patriots alleged employee had anything to do with the Kennedy Assassination or the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

Good quality reporting there ESPN!

#4 So of course that prompts the NFL's "VP of I've got a Chip on My Shoulder about being jilted by Belichick when I was Jets President" to of course make a special visit to the field to inspect, not the KICKING balls used by SPECIAL TEAMS but (wait for it)...

The PASSING balls used by the OFFENSE

And of course the ONLY BALL that was 2lb under is STILL the one the Colts had in their possession

#5 And despite having 4 anonymous NFL sources comment within this new ESPN story - the NFL has no comment about the story

NOPE! NOTHING FISHY HERE!!!!

Did I miss anything?

Oh yeah - and all this coincidentally happens the day that the Patriots formally file tampering charges against the JETS

Near as I can tell Kensil has the Motive, Means and Opportunity not only to fabricate a scandal, but also be a source to try to revive the story with an ESPN story

....,and the NFL Network STILL refuses to even acknowledge the ESPN "story". And the question, once again, is WHY?

Read Mike Loyko's tweets, about the new Adam Schefter report. lol.

Mike Loyko ‏@NEPD_Loyko 4m4 minutes ago
@AdamSchefter just poured gasoline all over OTL, @bkravitz , ESPN, @mortreport and lit the match himself.

... now an official gets fired for selling footballs ... bye bye Mr. Goodell, it was NOT nice knowing you.