The Published Wells Report.

I just glanced over the top of the page where it has the headlines. I see the following headline...

Bob Kravitz: "Tom Brady needs to beg for forgiveness"

I choked on a piece of chicken and started busting up laughing.

Kdo5 said:

I just glanced over the top of the page where it has the headlines. I see the following headline...

Bob Kravitz: "Tom Brady needs to beg for forgiveness"

I choked on a piece of chicken and started busting up laughing.

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I saw it too and made me angry.

QuantumMechanic said:

Not sure how I missed it the first time around, but saw this in the report which IMHO makes McNally look even shadier -- McNally's "job responsibilities as Officials Locker Room attendant did not involve the preparation, inflation or deflation of Patriots game balls."

Jastremski is an equipment manager, not McNally. So why are the two talking about McNally doing stuff with the balls?

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My reading of the report is that McNally was the person in the locker room when the refs checked and if necessary corrected the balls. He also was the one who provided the gauge and pump to the officials. (Actually that contradicts Anderson's report he had two gauges. I'll go back to read that).

It was my impression that McNally was the only person in the room from the Pats, and he would ask (pester) the officials to make sure the balls were inflated to as close to 12.5Psi as possible. And if the officials over-inflated the balls he would pester them to deflate them back to the lower limits. I thought this was an indirect instruction from Tom through Jastremski.

There was a comment that he only had one needle for both the gauge and the pump and that the refs had to unscrew it from one to use the other. I imagine that was quite the hassle for 12 balls and that was the reason for the joke.

QuantumMechanic said:

Not sure how I missed it the first time around, but saw this in the report which IMHO makes McNally look even shadier -- McNally's "job responsibilities as Officials Locker Room attendant did not involve the preparation, inflation or deflation of Patriots game balls."

Jastremski is an equipment manager, not McNally. So why are the two talking about McNally doing stuff with the balls?

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It is McNally's responsibility to make sure the refs don't overinflate the balls since Brady likes them on the lower end and McNally is the guy with the refs when the refs test and adjust the inflation. McNally even supplies the refs with an air pump. Those text messages came after the Jets game when the refs inflated some of the balls to 16 psi. Within that same conversation Jastremski even told McNally that the balls should have been 13 which completely refutes Well's inferences from his selected texts. Later that same week Brady told them to set the balls at 12.5 and to print off the page of the rule book that addresses psi and provide it to the refs if they try to inflate the balls higher than that. That text message conversation is completely logical.

Wells picked and chose which text messages that would support his narrative rather than the texts from the same conversation that refutes it. He completely glossed over the context of the conversation that indicates no wrong doing.

The problem with all this, even though this report is flawed, is the the NFL mishandled the Rice and to a lesser extreme the Peterson situation. They are not going to look weak again.

Goodell knows this and I guarantee he is finally going to grow a pair of balls and appease all the other owners. I expect a four to six game suspension.

This is bad timing and if this happened before the Rice and Peterson situation the penalty would have been much less severe.

I hate the NFL.

ensoul said:

The problem with all this, even though this report is flawed, is the the NFL mishandled the Rice and to a lesser extreme the Peterson situation. They are not going to look weak again.

Goodell knows this and I guarantee he is finally going to grow a pair of balls and appease all the other owners. I expect a four to six game suspension.

This is bad timing and if this happened before the Rice and Peterson situation the penalty would have been much less severe.

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Then explain Woody Johnson getting a slap on the wrist fine for text book tampering when every case before it Goodell fined, stripped the team of a pick and made the two teams swap picks?

Also you are naive to think that won't be one of the first things Brady's lawyers would bring up in court about how Goodell and the NFL looked incompetent handling those situations and they are using their client as an example.

Page 40 of the Wells report:

JMC00 said:

Then explain Woody Johnson getting a slap on the wrist fine for text book tampering when every case before it Goodell fined, stripped the team of a pick and made the two teams swap picks?

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That's easy. 4 Letters. J E T S

karguy85 said:

As well reasoned as we are going to get from the national media I fear. He makes some valid points, but I still think the conclusion accepts Wells's findings to easily.

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Wetzel grew up in MA as a Pats fan. I expected better from him. He wrote an article he probably didn't really want to write simply in order to kowtow to his audience.

Kdo5 said:

I just glanced over the top of the page where it has the headlines. I see the following headline...

Bob Kravitz: "Tom Brady needs to beg for forgiveness"

I choked on a piece of chicken and started busting up laughing.

Click to expand...

Shouldn't he say that Brady "probably" needs to beg for forgiveness?

JMC00 said:

Then explain Woody Johnson getting a slap on the wrist fine for text book tampering when every case before it Goodell fined, stripped the team of a pick and made the two teams swap picks?

Also you are naive to think that won't be one of the first things Brady's lawyers would bring up in court about how Goodell and the NFL looked incompetent handling those situations and they are using their client as an example.

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Hey you're right. Problem is the teams and the media are outraged by what the pats did and not necessarily what the jets did. I mean is anybody beside pats fans upset about the tampering charges?

What the Jets did does not hurt the integrity of the game as much as deflating the footballs does.

Brady is going to get suspensed and bradys lawyers can point out all day the nfls incompetence and how other teams didn't get punished enough but I don't think it will do much good.

Goodell is going to say is what brady did was unprecedented and serious and the suspension is just.

All I am saying is people need to prepare themselfs for having Garoppolo start several games for the pats this year.

Let us all remember that all of the Patriots balls were in range of what Headsmart labs had in their scientific simulation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxsXFX3tDpg…

Can someone please post those 2 or 3 sentences that were buried somewhere near the end of the report that basically admits that they had no evidence?

I remember reading a very damning part of their report that clearly admits that they really didn't have much, but now I can't find it. Thanks.

ensoul said:

Hey you're right. Problem is the teams and the media are outraged by what the pats did and not necessarily what the jets did. I mean is anybody beside pats fans upset about the tampering charges?

What the Jets did does not hurt the integrity of the game as much as deflating the footballs does.

Brady is going to get suspensed and his lawyers can point out all day the nfls incompetence and how other teams didn't get punished enough but I don't think it will do much good.

All Goodell is going to say is what brady did was unprecedented and serious and the suspension is just.

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So, textbook tampering to help you sign away from your toughest competitor one of the best defensive players in the NFL does not hurt the integrity of the game?

BronxPatsFan80 said:

So, textbook tampering to help you sign away from your toughest competitor one of the best defensive players in the NFL does not hurt the integrity of the game?

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You need to read my post again. I clearly said it does already but not as much as deflating footballs. I mean we can agree that this deflategate is getting more attention than any tamper change ever has?

Teams are outraged by what the pats did and not what the jets did. Therefore, right or wrong it is much more serious

ensoul said:

The problem with all this, even though this report is flawed, is the the NFL mishandled the Rice and to a lesser extreme the Peterson situation. They are not going to look weak again.

Goodell knows this and I guarantee he is finally going to grow a pair of balls and appease all the other owners. I expect a four to six game suspension.

This is bad timing and if this happened before the Rice and Peterson situation the penalty would have been much less severe.

Click to expand...

Tyranny of the mob will get Brady. Appeasing the mob is irresistible to politicians and commissioners alike.

ensoul said:

Hey you're right. Problem is the teams and the media are outraged by what the pats did and not necessarily what the jets did. I mean is anybody beside pats fans upset about the tampering charges?

What the Jets did does not hurt the integrity of the game as much as deflating the footballs does.

Brady is going to get suspensed and bradys lawyers can point out all day the nfls incompetence and how other teams didn't get punished enough but I don't think it will do much good.

Goodell is going to say is what brady did was unprecedented and serious and the suspension is just.

All I am saying is people need to prepare themselfs for having Garoppolo start several games for the pats this year.

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If your premise is that everyone is upset that the Pats won the Super Bowl then I can accept part of what your saying. That's the only thing one could be upset about because this report, while it makes damning accusations, provides nothing to support those claims.

ensoul said:

I am pretty sure it does already but much as deflating footballs. I mean we can agree that this deflategate is getting more attention than any tamper change ever has?

Teams are outraged by what the pats did and not what the jets did. Therefore, right or wrong it is much more serious

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It is "much more serious" because the Pats and Brady are accused of doing it.

Okay, there are some other points I have been thinking about--some of these have been raised I am sure, but some others might be new.

1) different state of the 2 teams balls--okay, keep in mind that players have said that new balls are waxy and need to be scuffed, etc. to give them a more natural grip. Also keep in mind balls are made of animal skins--i.e. porous. It is established that the pats liked their balls at a lower PSI than the Colts. It also seems Brady is very particular about the prep of his balls. It seems conceivable to me that the Pats balls were more broken in, and thus more porous, which would account for slightly more leakage, and thus the discrepancy in drops between the 2 teams. If the league did not conduct tests with the same actual balls the teams used in the games, but with identical new balls, then the test would not reflect the actual game ball conditions.

2) I have raised this before---pre-game gauging was done in the shower area. If showers had been used recently, the room would be hot and steamy, thus leading to a higher PSI rating. THis was not addressed at all--were both sets tested in the same shower area, how much time apart, had the shoers been used recently, etc. etc.

3) this has been noticed before, but it is worth repeating--the difference in measurements from the two refs were consistently between .3-.4 PSI. This was attributed mainly to the difference in gauges, BUT it seems to me that it could be in part due to leakage from one test to next. The league said this was considered but not found to be great enough to account for the difference, but no numbers of the drop in pSI from tests were produced. This couples with my next point:

4) if it took several minutes to test Pats balls at halftime, then the Colts balls would have a chance to warm up more and have a PSI closer to when they were originally tested. If one couples this difference with possible air loss from multiple checks (see 3 above) you start to understand the discrepancy more.
Indeed, if the possible shower factor from 2 above is taken into account, then you would have the Pats balls tested in the worst conditions--they would be set to 12.5 at a higher room temp than the Colts balls (if shower had been in use), meaning they were actually below 12.5 at normal room temp, AND they were tested first coming in from halftime, meaning they would still be showing the lower temps from the cold. If each of these two factors account for a .2 or so difference, we'd see how they'd come out with aobut a .5 greater drop on average overall from the Colts.