The absurdity of penalizing us our 2016 first round pick before the season even begins..

I've watched the draft since 92 like a zoned out couch potato. I will not be watching next year and I encourage everyone else to as well.

It was done specifically to try to get us. Same reason they waited until after the 2015 #32 pick; that pick didn't have the "growth potential" this one does. It's also not "protected" the way the 2007 pick was, that became a 2&3 if our pick was in the Top 15, or something like that, I may have the details slightly off. This was specifically designed to stick the knife in and twist it.

Patriot Missile said:

I've watched the draft since 92 like a zoned out couch potato. I will not be watching next year and I encourage everyone else to as well.

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Not a chance that I'll watch Day 1. Why watch others get to open their present when ours was literally stolen.

I am NOT a conspiracy theorist.

That said, I do wonder as well if the timing of this was purposeful. As has been pointed out, we had the 32nd pick of the 2015 Draft. If the NFL gets their way they might hope we end up with say the 16th pick of the 2016 Draft.

Which has more value?

32nd 2015 pick
16th 2016 pick

Of course the joke is on Goodell, our 2016 pick is actually going to be 32nd as well.

I have more of a problem with the penalty being the highest first round pick, preventing the Pats from making a deal. That's just douchey and petty.

Danger Zone said:

Which has more value?

32nd 2015 pick
16th 2016 pick

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Not to mention that 2015 was a crap ass draft (overall not Patriots specifically). Thankfully we got a Top 20 value at #32 which thwarted the grand plan a little. Thanks Colts.

I'd like nothing more than to change everything that has happened. But, we have been abandoned on that quest.
So we sit alone and tired of it all, hoping Brady can at least screw up Goodells plans!

BB might be on to next year, but the fans are stuck where Kraft left us, up the creek!

And as I love pointing out, the Patriots have drafted in the absolute worst average drafting position of ANY team in the NFL for the past 15 years.

This means, we draft with the LEAST amount of draft capital (position) of any team.

We lost a 1st rounder for Belichick. We lost a 1st rounder for CameraPlacementGate.

For the past 15 years, we draft behind EVERY other team in the NFL. This is an incredibly cumulative and insidious disadvantage in restocking a team with talent in my opinion.

And now the goons in the NFL want to take away another 1st and a 4th for the mere suspicion of jaywalking.

If thats not punitive stop-winning-games vindictiveness then I'm a monkey's uncle.

Brady6 said:

People say Kraft is an intelligent man, but I question that because no intelligent man I know would accept a penalty without even knowing exactly what it is. Kraft has now done it twice. In 2007 he got away with it, unlike Roger Goodell I only hope he is fortunate enough to get away with it again.

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Kraft is corrupt. Only a corrupt business man would accept that. If he got something in the process or he is paying for an old debt now we will never know.

I swear the NFL is coming down on the Pats like the NCAA did "The U" back in the early 2000s. They weren't perfect but other football programs were 1000 times more culpable of misgivings.

but BB is the GM so what the NFL REALLY took from us is a 2016 1st, a 2015 4 6 and 7, and a 2016 6 and 7 and a 2017 7th.

OP has a great point...I half want the team to suck so it turns out that Krafty Baghdad Bob capitulated a top 10 pick...f him...I hope he rides around P10 in his livery golf cart and falls off...

robertweathers said:

I swear the NFL is coming down on the Pats like the NCAA did "The U" back in the early 2000s. They weren't perfect but other football programs were 1000 times more culpable of misgivings.

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Do Not Compare the Patriots to U Miami.

upstater1 said:

Do Not Compare the Patriots to U Miami.

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As it pertains to off the field stuff- agreed.

But in terms of actually doing things wrong on the field and during recruiting, they were pretty tame.

I have a problem with the NFL levelling any kind of penalty against the Pats based on the crap that was in the Wells report period!

One aspect of taking away a first round pick you don't hear much about is that it's also penalizing some college player. Instead of 32 first round picks next year, there will be 31, which means some player is getting drafted in the 2nd round instead of the 1st. While I believe the length of the contracts is the same, a second round pick will be making less money than a first rounder. I wonder if the NFLPA has given this angle much thought.

Patriot Missile said:

I've watched the draft since 92 like a zoned out couch potato. I will not be watching next year and I encourage everyone else to as well.

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Heh, I was a year ahead of you.

Concussion Protocol said:

I have more of a problem with the penalty being the highest first round pick, preventing the Pats from making a deal. That's just douchey and petty.

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I would enjoy seeing the Pats trade up to the top of the 2nd round to make the loss of the first round pick almost non consequential...further infuriating the haters.

Brady6 said:

The thing that I am most bothered by is Goodell taking away our 2016 first round pick without even knowing the actual value of the pick. Most of us me included assume this is going to be the loss of a late first round pick, but realistically it may not be. During the 2011 offseason I think most would have expected the Colts to be picking in the late part of the 2012 draft. Then they ended up with the #1 overall pick.

I'm not saying we are going to have a losing season, but in a game that has the potential for injury that the NFL offers you never know. What irritates me is I feel that Goodell could have issued the sanction against the 2015 pick, which would have been #32 overall, but instead he likely delayed it to intentionally to allow him to take the 2016 pick with the hope of screwing us over more.

Looking at the situation Goodell has done his due diligence to put the Patriots in the best position to lose a high draft pick in 2016. He allowed his team the Jets to tamper with and sign one of our best players for a mere $100K, and he suspended our HOF QB for 1/4 of the season.

It's pretty simple it may end up being the #32 pick, but at the end of the day no matter how small the chance may actually be this means Goodell blindly issued a sanction that holds the possibility of being the #1 overall, pick, or more possiblily a top 10 pick. This means without even knowing Goodell could have taken the next Andrew Luck, JJ Watt, etc. from this team.

People say Kraft is an intelligent man, but I question that because no intelligent man I know would accept a penalty without even knowing exactly what it is. Kraft has now done it twice. In 2007 he got away with it, unlike Roger Goodell I only hope he is fortunate enough to get away with it again.

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Yup, I said this a few weeks ago that it was intentionally delayed and then applied to our 2016 because they wanted it to sting even more.

Its also unprecedented (yet again), because even during the BS cameraplacementgate penalty it was conditional based on whether or not the Patriots made the playoffs... If they made the playoffs, it was the 1st rounder, if they missed the playoffs it would be reduced to a 2nd rounder.

He had no intention of doing that this time and I think the Patriots blowing the whistle on the Jets tampering with Revis pissed Goodell and his cronies off even more, since they knew they had to punish the Jets because it was so blatant.


Also, just look at how the media on every station, espn, nfln and nfl.com are polishing the knob of the other 3 AFCE teams about how great they are and how they like their chances.. They exclude the Patriots from basically every list that they do, or in a case where they decide to include them or a player like with Bucky Brooks, they add an asterisk or some other BS to the article.

The NFL wants the Patriots gone.. and they're pumping the Jets up something fierce right now, as well as Buffalo. Its so obvious that there is an agenda at play here that its insulting to the human intelligence.. and Bobby Kraft is 100% on board with it too, which disgusts me even more to know that our owner doesn't even support Brady and the team more than his little billionaire club POS buddies on Park Avenue.

This has been the worst offseason since 2007... that one was a little worse because of how we basically lost in a humiliating fashion by going 18-1, so people just piled on.. at least this time we have the Lombardi to keep us warm at night, but it still sucks having the joy of following your team during a SB run be completely destroyed less than 4 hours after the AFCCG ended.

Its all truly disgusting, and IMO is proof that the NFL is an entertainment business that is run like the WWE. Even if the Patriots make it to the playoffs, there is no f***ing way that the refs will allow them to win any close game.. they'll have to win in the same manner they did the AFCCG, because if the game is even close at all they'll have every single BS call against them and let every single foul the opposition commits go unflagged, which is exactly what happened back in 2006 against the Colts when the NFL was determined to get Manning a SB title.