Broncos' 2010 Filming Violation vs. Deflategate

I just wrote this to Florio (pardon the grammar - I'm pretty pissed off right now):

"http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5855075

Now, mind you, the Broncos have 3 of the highest fines in league history, yet get off with a mere $50,000 fine. It took 2 weeks for the Broncos to report this although there was knowledge of this by coaches and ownership. Also, the same main players are in place now that were then: Vincent, Pash, Goodell, etc. The Broncos organization denies having viewed the tape, and the NFL took their word at face value. So, $50,000 each to McDaniels and the Broncos organization.

Fast forward to 2015 with the New England Patriots having maybe deflated some footballs (the more we view the evidence, the less convinced we are that anything did, indeed, happen to them. After all science does not lie), the organization is fined $1,000,000 and two draft picks when it was shown that neither Belichick, nor Kraft had any knowledge (even if deflation really did happen). As you well know, “Vincent” (yeah, it was him that made the penalty, right?) still killed the Patriots as an organization because of a past indiscretion by Belichick.

Again, all the same major players are in place now, and the Broncos took 2 weeks to report this - I would certainly consider this to be lack of cooperation - yet one gets less than a slap on the wrist while the other gets a death sentence. Does this league have any kind of set standards?!?!"

lusdawg said:

I just wrote this to Florio (pardon the grammar - I'm pretty pissed off right now):

"http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5855075

Now, mind you, the Broncos have 3 of the highest fines in league history, yet get off with a mere $50,000 fine. It took 2 weeks for the Broncos to report this although there was knowledge of this by coaches and ownership. Also, the same main players are in place now that were then: Vincent, Pash, Goodell, etc. The Broncos organization denies having viewed the tape, and the NFL took their word at face value. So, $50,000 each to McDaniels and the Broncos organization.

Fast forward to 2015 with the New England Patriots having maybe deflated some footballs (the more we view the evidence, the less convinced we are that anything did, indeed, happen to them. After all science does not lie), the organization is fined $1,000,000 and two draft picks when it was shown that neither Belichick, nor Kraft had any knowledge (even if deflation really did happen). As you well know, “Vincent” (yeah, it was him that made the penalty, right?) still killed the Patriots as an organization because of a past indiscretion by Belichick.

Again, all the same major players are in place now, and the Broncos took 2 weeks to report this - I would certainly consider this to be lack of cooperation - yet one gets less than a slap on the wrist while the other gets a death sentence. Does this league have any kind of set standards?!?!"

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NO, that's the whole problem with the Goodell regime, he hands out fines and suspensions willy nilly depending on public opinion, there's a reason Tags overturned the Saints bountygate penalties.

lusdawg said:

I just wrote this to Florio (pardon the grammar - I'm pretty pissed off right now):

"http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5855075

Now, mind you, the Broncos have 3 of the highest fines in league history, yet get off with a mere $50,000 fine. It took 2 weeks for the Broncos to report this although there was knowledge of this by coaches and ownership. Also, the same main players are in place now that were then: Vincent, Pash, Goodell, etc. The Broncos organization denies having viewed the tape, and the NFL took their word at face value. So, $50,000 each to McDaniels and the Broncos organization.

Fast forward to 2015 with the New England Patriots having maybe deflated some footballs (the more we view the evidence, the less convinced we are that anything did, indeed, happen to them. After all science does not lie), the organization is fined $1,000,000 and two draft picks when it was shown that neither Belichick, nor Kraft had any knowledge (even if deflation really did happen). As you well know, “Vincent” (yeah, it was him that made the penalty, right?) still killed the Patriots as an organization because of a past indiscretion by Belichick.

Again, all the same major players are in place now, and the Broncos took 2 weeks to report this - I would certainly consider this to be lack of cooperation - yet one gets less than a slap on the wrist while the other gets a death sentence. Does this league have any kind of set standards?!?!"

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Look up the Broncos record that year and you'll have your answer.

Keep in mind that the Broncos record also trumps the fact that Cameragate had already set a precedent for illegal taping, even though the Pats taping the Rams was never supported by any evidence when Matt Walsh failed to produce the goods.

The Pats would have been hammered worse than Deflategate if they were the culprits here.

If there is one thing we have learned it is that the harshness of the penalty determines the seriousness of the offense. ( Unless you are a pathetic franchise in which case the quest for parity overrules all).

cmasspatsfan said:

NO, that's the whole problem with the Goodell regime, he hands out fines and suspensions willy nilly depending on public opinion,

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This.

Falcons pump in crowd noise for years, no one cares: loss of 5th rounder.

You know, bringing up the Broncos thing doesn't really help the Pat's case with outsiders, since Josh McDaniel was the coach. It's just considered an away game in the Pat's cheating history.

No one cares about the Broncos...why no one brings it up

rochrist said:

You know, bringing up the Broncos thing doesn't really help the Pat's case with outsiders, since Josh McDaniel was the coach. It's just considered an away game in the Pat's cheating history.

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Exactly. Bringing this up only further solidifies the Pats as cheaters meme.

Violation occurs, one of four options:
a) Team sucks: little to no penalty
b) Team is good: higher penalty
c) Team is NEP: staggering penalty
d) Team is NYJ: likely no penalty

Bring that up and the anti-patriots fans will bring up the Patriots connection and that it was the former Patriot influence that caused the illegal taping.

PatsWickedPissah said:

Exactly. Bringing this up only further solidifies the Pats as cheaters meme.

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Quoting the Goodell letter: "This appears to be a single incident by an employee who acted entirely on his own" - does in fact help the Patriots case

It shows that Goodell sometimes assume the best - and sometimes the worst

In the case of the Patriots, even though the best recollection of the official was that there was no deflation - Goodell assumed the opposite

I think any unbiased review of this "investigation" will fully clear Brady

Wasn't McDaniels the one who turned it in?

I

JoeSixPat said:

Quoting the Goodell letter: "This appears to be a single incident by an employee who acted entirely on his own" - does in fact help the Patriots case

It shows that Goodell sometimes assume the best - and sometimes the worst

In the case of the Patriots, even though the best recollection of the official was that there was no deflation - Goodell assumed the opposite

I think any unbiased review of this "investigation" will fully clear Brady

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I completely concur.

However, I don't think that unbiased review is ever going to happen, unfortunately.

Froob said:

Wasn't McDaniels the one who turned it in?

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I believe it was the team executives, and that didn't happen until a week after they learned of it

rochrist said:

You know, bringing up the Broncos thing doesn't really help the Pat's case with outsiders, since Josh McDaniel was the coach. It's just considered an away game in the Pat's cheating history.

Click to expand...

McDaniels was the Broncos HC at the time of the infraction.

Did Spygate reflect negatively on the Giants, Browns, and Rats since BB used to work for them?

Maybe the Giants, Browns, and Rats should lose their 1st round picks for Deflategate.

It was always ridiculous that the Broncos received a slap on the wrist for this, even moreso in light of recent events. Consider:

• In 2007, the NFL has established that illegal taping was very, very bad.
• There is no gray area or vaguely worded guidelines about taping practices where there is room for multiple interpretations. Everyone knows it shouldn't be done.
• Denver had a "pattern of behavior" of breaking the rules both on and off the field (salary cap violations, vaseline coated jersies and leg-whipping by the OL, spying on other team's practices*, etc.)

All the ingredients were there for a justifiably harsh penalty. Instead, the team and the head coach received $50K fines as part of Goodell's "uniform" application of discipline.

One positive that came out of this story is that it undermined the value of filming. The Broncos filmed the 49ers practice, something the 49ers were unaware of and couldn't prepare for. Armed with this inside information, the Broncos still lost the game. Denver was a bad team that year, but San Francisco, at 6-10, was not great either. If filming a practice or signals was really as critical as the Patriots Haters believe, the Broncos would have won convincingly.

With regards to this really reflecting poorly on the Patriots because Josh McDaniels was the head coach at the time, that's just the spin that the Patriots Haters put on the story to avoid admitting that another team was cheating. To build off what the Gr8est said, were the Bills responsible for Gregg Williams actions? Were the Giants or Cowboys looked at negatively for Sean Payton's?

And if it was really all on McDaniels, why didn't he receive a higher penalty. He came from the "Cheating Patriots," why wasn't he given a higher fine or a suspension? Instead, he was given the same punishment as the team. This is a Broncos penalty, no matter how much they try an weasel out of it.



*The story of the Broncos spying on Chargers practices is pretty interesting. In September 2007, Jason Cole wrote a story about cheating in the NFL and included the following paragraph:

[The Chargers] increased their security ’several years ago’ during weeks in which they played the Broncos because Denver spies were videotaping Chargers practices. The NFL had been aware of it for several years (at least one NFL official had seen one of the tapes), but didn't step in because it was considered a team issue."

You can read a couple of other accounts of the spying here and here. The content from the Cole story was later removed because Shanahan and the NFL objected. The retraction by Yahoo appears above the article. The Denver Post has a write up of Yahoo correcting the story.

It's interesting that Shanahan retained an attorney and had this story squashed. That should have been a lesson for the Bob Kraft that when a negative article appears, like the SI one where the writer claimed Belichick was using the big screen TV at CBS Scene for an unfair advantage and lots of other crazy things, and is full of untrue or unverified things, you can do something about it.

It's also worth noting that the NFL denounced the report that an NFL official had seen the tape of the Chargers practice. The NFL will shot down a story that puts them in a negative light, but remained silent about Mortensen's story, which they knew was false. That kinda makes sense, though, since the NFL was the source of that false story, also.

If you want to go after the Broncos* do it for something real, like salary cap violations so Elway* didn't go out like Dan Marino*.