Armando Salguero: Ted Wells is not an investigator, he is a prosecutor

upstater1 said:

Right, but it all depends on the gauge and who checked first

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Oswlek said:

I understand. You seem to be arguing against a point I'm not making.

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Fixit said:

Or it was a text message of a guy who referred to himself as "The Deflator" once in a series of joking texts with another guy, and in the context of getting chewed out due to balls being way over inflated in a game. Same thing!

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upstater1 said:

Not really. Im saying if there's no evidence the balls were tampered with, everything that came before, including the texts, is irrelevant.

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KontradictioN said:

And that needs to come out in a court of law, not a private report that will just as easily be discredited by skeptics. Brady is wise not to show all of his cards right now.

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Oswlek said:

In fairness, they have lots of evidence, it's just disputable how compelling it is.

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ViperGTS said:

No they got a lot of evidentiary fragments.

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Oswlek said:

There is no legitimate distinction between the two.

The funny thing is, I agree with you guys. There are holes galore in this report and several data points they are using actually contradict the conclusion. But the bar that needs to be cleared for something to be considered "evidence" isn't high.

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Oswlek said:

Then you are wrong. You can say it is inconclusive. Or it is misleading. Or you can provide alternate explanations. But to say there is no evidence at all is factually incorrect.

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Danger Zone said:

I hear that and understand it.

However, I feel that is separate from getting the message out to the rest of the NFL and the world that Wells was never an independent, impartial fact-finding investigator.

Well's role was NOT as an ombudsman as Goodell is trying to pretend it was, Well's job all along was to find the Patriots guilty of deflating footballs.

The conclusions he came to in his report clearly demonstrate this bias.

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Don Yee was a guest on ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike on Friday and defended his star client.

“The [Wells] report stated that it was ‘more probable than not’ -- when a lawyer writes that they’re basically saying it’s 50.1 percent vs. 49.9 percent, essentially a coin flip.

“The report could have stated we have absolute certainty these things happened; the report didn’t state that. It could have stated we have virtual certainty these things happened; it didn’t state that. It could have stated we have substantial certainty these things happened; it didn’t state that. So it really went to the lowest threshold it could possibly go. So I’d just be interested to see what the league does because the league’s not obligated to follow the findings here. The league could decide that well, with the 50.1 percent vs. 49.9 percent, we don’t think that there’s enough here.”

Yee reiterated that Brady did not knowingly do anything that would violate a rule, and had no knowledge of anyone taking air out of footballs after they were weighed by officials.

He also defended Brady’s decision not to hand over his phone to investigators.

“There are a lot of nuanced reasons that I don’t really want to get into here,” Yee said. “I can tell you this, when Tom was in the interview, it was nearly one entire day, the investigators -- there were four attorneys there -- they confronted him with the texts from the equipment staffers as well as asked him about his own phone. So they went through that very thoroughly in person, they were able to observe his body language. And so I feel that we completely cooperated with the investigation from that standpoint.”

When asked if he feels Brady is being held to a different standard because of his status and the team he plays for, Yee simply said, “Yes.”

And he was critical of the way the NFL has handled the investigation.

“This was not a legal proceeding,” Yee said. “It was an investigator hired by the league to serve as a prosecutor, a judge and a jury. The Patriots’ attorneys nor myself, none of us had the ability as in a legal proceeding to cross-examine any of the league’s witnesses.”

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upstater1 said:

What is the evidence the AFCCG balls were tampered with?

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ViperGTS said:

This is my point. For instance, I if I had a text in a drug case that the person said I'm high as a kite! That would be bad right? And believable in a drug case. However, what if the text was part of a series that regardless of what it referred to a joyous life moment that had zero to do with drugs?

This is what IMO the NFL did.

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BennyBledsoe said:

What can you expect when the majority of the owners (Goodell's bosses) hate the Patriots? Name me some teams that don't want to see the Patriots get torched. I bet they can be counted on one hand.

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Oswlek said:

We've already gone through this. You are clearly inserting "incontrovertible" before "evidence" and I am not. As I explained before:

There is no Compelling-O-Meter that determines whether something is "evidence" or just "data." The fact that my wife woke up to find me out of bed yesterday is evidence that I'm having an affair. Or that I turn invisible during REM sleep. Or that I was in the bathroom. It's up to her to decide what is most plausible.

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upstater1 said:

I think you are really twisting this.

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Oswlek said:

I've twisted nothing. Three of the balls came in slightly below the expected measurements. You don't think that's compelling, I don't think that's compelling, but neither has anything to do with whether it is evidence.

All you have to do is change your rant to say they don't have any compelling evidence and I'd agree with you. But to say they have no evidence at all is factually incorrect. I honestly don't know any other way to say this, so if you still disagree I guess we're at an impasse.

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