What Should/Can Kraft Do?

Bobby has lots of options at his disposal now. He's in what we term a "target rich environment."

1. Hire & pay a top notch lawyer to defend the Pats employee publicly smeared. He can use this investigation to go all discovery on anything both espn the NFL knew. Remember the offending espn reporter is married to a league official. Emails, etc. could reveal a plan to blame the Pats, or they could not. In any case corporate pukes will be puking in fear.

2. Demand that Goodell fire Kensil. In a private talk Goody HAS to admit Kensil endangered the product and created a firestorm that has not made the league look good. He has to go and so do any minions who were part of his fiasco.

3. Ask for an apology. It needn't be groveling as Kraft is bigger than that but the league owes BB and Tom Brady an apology total some of the tarnish off their legacies. This is critically important especially after what Tom went through with the media.

4. This step is more difficult but Bob should push for at a minimum a public penalty against Grigson and better yet the Colts as the GM is responsible. In my wildest fantasies, no not the cheerleader ones, I'd see a Colts pick transubstantiated into a Pats pick but hey this is not heaven.

Any other thoughts & elaborations?

All of the above.

I really like #1 ... any means to force a discovery process.

He should do (1) ASAP and personally tell Roger that he'll be happy to pay McNally's lawyer's bills no matter how many people, organizations, and documents McNally's lawyer wants to subpoena.

As far as tarnished legacies goes, they'd have to prove wrong-doing first. Secondly, haters will never care about apologies and will parrot "cheaters, tarnished dynasty, asterisks and cover-up" now and forever. Only Pats fans and other fans that aren't haters will care.

I'm wondering if hiring Wells wasn't Kraft's doing. Look at the timeline.

-Patriots ask about missing ball

-Refs discover missing ball and call Kensil

-All of this is caught on tape (supposedly), tape that is likely owned by NE.

-The next day, the Patriots are getting investigated????

It would make sense for a problem with league operations to get investigated by Kensil, since that's his wheelhouse. After Kraft realizes that with an official on his camera doing shady ****, Kensil has inexplicably decided to investigate the Patriots he goes to Goodell and says I want an independent investigator. Kensil's investigation gets kicked to the curb, so he retaliates by leaking anti-Patriot information. Hilarity ensues.

rlcarr said:

He should do (1) ASAP and personally tell Roger that he'll be happy to pay McNally's lawyer's bills no matter how many people, organizations, and documents McNally's lawyer wants to subpoena.

Click to expand...

One thing that can and may work in McNally's favor if he chooses to pursue a cause of action against ESPN is that he is NOT a public figure like Goodell,Kraft or TFB. As a result the standards are different and he doesn't have to show "actual malice"as he would if he were a public figure...
..

Bobsyouruncle said:

I'm wondering if hiring Wells wasn't Kraft's doing.

Click to expand...

I've thought all along that Wells was brought in at BK's insistence so that Goodell could not get away with a kangaroo court investigation.

I think we need to keep in mind that if some of the offenses that we are discussing turn out to be reality, they are orders of magnitude more egregious than Spygate.

And the punishment needs to be orders of magnitude more significant as well.

I want Kensil fired more than anything else. If I am Bob Kraft that would be demand No. 1, if Goodell won't do it I would let him know the search for his successor is underway.

This whole situation smells of a personal vendetta by Kensil to get even with Belichick
for bailing out on the Jets. If I was Bob Kraft, I would hire my own lawyer and investigating
team. Lawyer Wells's findings will be directed in whatever direction Goodell chooses if the
money is right. Kraft must realize that he is a person of interest along with Belichick and Brady
at a witch hunt.

It's nice to dream, but all these potential outcomes are predicated on the Pats being exonerated.

I believe a commish in self-preservation mode still has the motive to deliver the Pats to the mob on a silver platter to save face. If you have corrupt officials working for your league I have no illusions about what a corrupt commish will do.

NE_Zealot said:

It's nice to dream, but all these potential outcomes are predicated on the Pats being exonerated.

I believe a commish in self-preservation mode still has the motive to deliver the Pats to the mob on a silver platter to save face. If you have corrupt officials working for your league I have no illusions about what a corrupt commish will do.

Click to expand...

This continues to become more and more more unlikely a result as the league continues to embarrass themselves and the Pats keep coming out looking clean. The Pats at this point are beginning to enter a position of strength and they'd be absolutely crazy not to take advantage of that fact.

Take the restraints off Bill? Let him begin the f*** you tour of demise part 2 where he shatters the Denver Mannings total points scored in a season record. You know Tom would be up for it.

At the very least, if I was Mr. Kraft I would hire a competent investigator and mirror the NFL investigation. I would not be counting on a Wells investigation to be fair or unbiased. If you can follow the bouncing leaks, they all are coming from someone inside the investigation!

I would like the league to investigate the leaks; more importantly, I want the league's official report to include several buzzwords to be floated around the mass media for several days; words such as "fiasco" to describe their investigation; "witchhunt" to describe the way they attacked the Patriots; "unprofessional" in the way the Patriots were hatcheted by the media and league sources, and "vindicated of suspicion" to describe their findings of the Patriots' actions, rather than "inconclusive."

This is where our attention should be right now. Kraft needs to know how much suffering goes on in the fan base over the attacks, and the fact that there is no response. We are the people that, drip by drip, put all that money in his pocket. He needs to stand up to this in a big way if he is to honor the relationship.

Colts punishment should be Trent Richardson as a starter for 2 more seasons.

betterthanthealternative said:

This is where our attention should be right now. Kraft needs to know how much suffering goes on in the fan base over the attacks, and the fact that there is no response. We are the people that, drip by drip, put all that money in his pocket. He needs to stand up to this in a big way if he is to honor the relationship.

Click to expand...

No question........nothing short of a page one apology, national news story, with the awarding of a draft choice ( for pain and suffering) is acceptable.

We the fans of New England have really been dragged through the mud with the hate driven national agenda that BSPN and the rest of the hateful spiteful media bestowed upon us.

I do not mind being hated nationally, as a matter of fact I love it ( I get it, I once hated the Yankees, Cowboys, 49ers, long time winners etc etc) -- but this " hatred" needs to be for the right reasons, not the the phony cheatriot belief.

Whatever it is that comes our way once we are "cleared" has to address and satisfy the need for relief and make it to the national stage. I need something more than a couple of press releases that nobody but us will read in order to continue to embrace the fanatical relationship we have with our New England Patriots football club.

If the Wells report exonerates the Patriots, then I'm probably fine with Kraft calling it a day with his bold SB week presser.

If the Wells report is wishy-washy, as I expect it will be, then the Patriots should pursue any of the avenues you have suggested. They can't take one for the NFL again and let the team's rep be damaged unwarrantedly. I think Kraft's aforementioned speech in SB week makes it clear he's not likely to do that again.

As MFing awesome as Bill Belichick's presser was, I still wish he had actually performed the same experiments for the media there that day. Not only would it have forced the media to sit there for a couple hours in hilarious fashion, but their tiny collective brains would've exploded trying to grasp probably one of the most intuitive equations known to science. If Wells comes out with BS, I'd love to see Professor Belichick back on stage and demonstrating, look - this is what we do, here's the PSI at 12.5, everyone sit tight for a while and watch it when we measure again after putting in this fridge set at 50 F. And then at the end he does a cartwheel off the stage and tells everyone to go f**k themselves.