A Thorough Look at DeflateGate - How Did We Get To This Point?

PatsFanSince74 said:

I'd be lying if I said I'd read every word of the article, but I tried to pick out the main themes. What a thorough job!

Given all the different threads that Vampatella weaves together, it leaves me aware that Kessler's team must be working 24/7 as it prepares for the Appeal and, most likely, an eventual trip to Federal Court.

That led me to wonder who will be conducting the Defense for the League during the Appeal?

Will it be just Goodell himself (unlikely)?

Will it be the hacks on the NFL's own internal legal team (equally unlikely because they would be eaten alive by Kessler)?

Or will it be lawyers from Paul, Weiss (I doubt it would be Wells himself as, the more I think about it, the more I think he's just a face in a suit with the real work done by others)? I think that's the only realistic possibility.

After reading this piece and the AEI report, I am now 99.9% certain that the NFLPA, Brady and Kessler are going to take this to Federal Court unless Goodell reduces the suspension to zero games, where they will most likely prevail.

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Tony2046 said:

I wonder if 0 games will be enough. Brady may want full vindication on the matter such as a statement from Goodell that Brady clearly had nothing to do with any tampering with the footballs.

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Interestingly, the text exchanges between McNally and Jastremski almost certainly disprove Wells’ entire case, and here’s why. Consider that they rip on Tom Brady pretty openly together. Brady is the fourth-most important person in the Patriots’ organization, behind owners Robert and Jonathan Kraft, and the head coach Bill Belichick. There is zero chance that McNally and Jastremski ever dreamed their text exchanges would ever be made public, or they would never in a million years have spoken of Brady in such disparaging terms – that is, if they valued their jobs. The fact that they did speak about Brady like this tells us that they spoke very openly and freely in their text conversations, about things that would have been taboo subjects. If that’s the case, where are the references to illegally tampering with footballs? They simply aren’t there. There is no indication at all of any scheme to illegally deflate footballs, to any level, never mind below 12.5 psi. None. This is, given their propensity to say things that would quickly get them fired if those messages were ever made public, a glaring omission, and strong evidence damaging Wells’ contention.

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Koma said:

This is a great summary of the entire affair. Very thorough and well researched. Nice work by John Vampatella.

The only quibble I have would be something to make navigating easier. It's 8 pages long, but the only way to move between pages is a previous and continue button. If there was a way to go from page 2 to page 8 more directly, that would be helpful.

That's a minor complaint, really. There was an item in the footnotes that jumped out to me. Other people on the board have probably thought of this, but it never occurred to me:



I'd say you could make a case for Brady being #3 on the list of most important people in the Patriots organization, but that's not the main point. You'd expect that there would have been some texts between McNally and Jastremski about deflating balls illegally. Something like "I couldn't do it this week, the refs were with me the whole time" or "Went off without a hitch, had plenty of time to get them all to 11" or something that would point to a scheme to deflate the footballs post-inspcction. Instead, there's nothing.

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RayClay said:

I'm pretty much sick of the topic, but that is a fantastic article.

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