NFL News OT: Dolphins Owner Steven Ross Suspended, Picks Forfeited, For Tampering With Brady, Payton

[lancerman]

you’re acting like his fanbase did nothing for him or any other player…

This fanbase paid for tickets and watched tv to enjoy games. Exactly like every fanbase in the league. Do you really want to compare what he did for the franchise and how much it grew under his run of success compared to that?

 

[Ring 6]

Yet he didnt sign with the team that was talking to him

That isn’t relevant at all.

 

[jlu52]

Fins forums crying that they got hit harder than the Patriots did for spygate lol.

I suggest that compared to how the Pats have had their ass kicked by their violations, the stinking fish should have had their ass kicked much harder. What Miami is collectively being penalized for is monumentally worse than anything the Pats have done.

 

[All3Phases]

There is a nuance to the topic of cap space you are missing.

There is a difference between having cap space/paying players and managing the cap for roster and strategic planning purposes.

If you want to say they had the financial means to sign Tom to a Drew Brees deal or 2y/50m deal fine.

It's obvious the NEP saw the need to rebuild after 2019 and wanted as much financial flexibility as possible which means limiting the amount of dead cap space for a 43 y/o QB who didn't want to be here nor did the the want him to be here.

I know you disagree with everything I said so let's move on.

You are also missing the obvious that they signed him to the dead cap deal after denying him the deals he wanted...Which, looking back wouldve been beneficial to the team. Again, I can link you things that show they literally had no money issues at the time, but you dont want it

 

[Guts]

This fanbase paid for tickets and watched tv to enjoy games. Exactly like every fanbase in the league. Do you really want to compare what he did for the franchise and how much it grew under his run of success compared to that?

Look at all those Patriots rings

 

[crawhammer]

He mailed the end of the season, he quit on his teammates not very professional he became a diva.

Revisionist history. Brady has never quit on any play, game or team. He's shown more dedication to his craft than any player in the history of the NFL. Universally adored by literally every teammate he's ever had. Model of professionalism. No evidence whatsoever that he ever acted like a "diva" in New England.

Belichick started quitting on Brady as early as 2014 when he drafted Garoppolo and was publicly talking up Brady's "age and contract" situation. Eventually Belichick only considered Brady worth one-year incentive laden contracts. Belichick knew the consequence of not offering Brady a multi-year contract... they put it in the final contract allowing Brady to walk for nothing after the 2019 season. Belichick grossly underestimated Brady's ability to continue on as an elite quarterback... he just had the best back-to-back seasons of his career (in another uniform).

It must be difficult to stomach your own Patriots fandom when you can't stand the single most important person in the history of the franchise by far.

You don’t talk to your enemy…period.

Fake outrage. Just an excuse to ridicule Brady, especially for you. Whatever conversations he had with Miami in 2019 were of no consequence to the 2019 season, not impactful for Brady, and rendered entirely meaningless after he signed with Tampa Bay.

Here's the end of the Patriots 2019 season:

Lost 28-24 to the Texans... Brady threw for 326 yards with 3 TD's while the defense gave up 4 TD's and a 140 passer rating to Watson.
Lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion.
Won vs the Bengals.
Won vs the Bills.
Lost 27-24 to the Dolphins... Brady gave them a 24-20 lead late in the fourth quarter and the defense couldn't stop Fitzpatrick on a 13-play 75-yard TD drive... all passing plays, Fitzgerald was 9-13 on the drive and looked like Dan Marino in his prime. This was the game too where the Patriots had a minute and all 3 timeouts remaining at the end of the first half and Belichick opted for 2 running plays and halftime.
Lost 20-13 to Derrick Henry... facing an inept quarterback and a one dimensional offense, the Patriots defense was completely helpless against Henry who entirely controlled the game.

So where in there exactly did Brady's conversations with Miami "take hold" and topple the season?

 

[catent]

See this is why you are a homer and it’s merely team loyalty with you. The vast majority of people here can be fans of the Patriots and be critical of poor decisions. You on the other hand live in a childish fantasy world where rival teams are the enemy and it’s sacrilege to talk to them.

Brady was an employee of the Patriots. At the end of the day it’s his job and he performs a service in exchange for the value of his contract. It is business.

In no other scenario would people besmirch a long time employee if they went to their employer for contract negotiations and asked to be locked in for several years, had the employer refuse that and create a situation where they were released at the end of the year, and then in the employees final year he talked to a rival company in the industry about his future.

Nobody in the real world would say the employee owes the employers any favors in that situation. But you can’t divorce your fanboyism from it and look at in any realistic manner so you have to dress it up like it’s some grand betrayal and another team is this despicable enemy like he’s defecting from the US to Russia.

No he was doing a job, his employer didn’t want to commit to him, his contract was running out and he was preparing for his future, a future his employer didn’t want to guarantee they would be part.

It’s just suck low logic coming from the typical jilted lover.

It's not about Brady doing the Patriots any favors; it's about being committed to the team he was playing for. If that's a "favor", so be it.

This behavior shouldn't be justified. He isn't a lowly employee with no leverage, working for some massive conglomerate. He's Tom Brady in the NFL.

Brady could've used the designated legal FA tampering period and still found a perfectly good situation for himself. There was no reason for him to get involved with the tampering other than that he apparently wanted to. But it wasn't necessary and he had a choice in the matter.

Brady made the decision to continuously engage in contract discussions with the Dolphins before and during a season played with the Patriots. If that does not seem highly problematic and troublesome to a Patriots fan, I'm not sure what to say.

 

[Ring 6]

How lol? Tom has been one of the best QBs in the league since.

It’s really pretty simple.
The team with Brady limped through the second half of 2019.
There was zero cap room to improve the team in 2020 even without paying Brady.
The 2021 team improved by having over 40% of the snaps in both sides of the ball played by new additions, and 75% of that was fueled by the money they didn’t pay Brady.
The team is rebuilt.
Had Brady stayed it would not be and we’d be a team trying to rebuild around a 43 year old qb.
We would have won nothing if we kept him and we are miles ahead right now of where we would have been.

 

[venecol]

You're not considering the totality of the situation. It wasn't just about paying one player.

Fine. Say we gave him 2/50 two years ago, where are we now? My guess is Tom just retired and is now working for Fox, and we just had to try to get a QB in a poor draft class for QBs with a poor draft position, and have the same kind of cap situation as Tampa is facing once Tom retires. Wonderful.

No, we get another SB, and the only team with 7. Then, both Bill and Tom retire walking into the sunset, holding hands.

 

[Bill Lee]

You can say they made the right choice, all im saying is they made a choice....They didnt want him. Btw he signed with TB in 2020 for 2/50 and is now still playing for them at an MVP level. So its not like the negotiating ends once the contract is signed

He's playing at a MVP level because Tampa sucked for the whole of the 2010s and had the draft capital to build a strong defense, a good OL and excellent WRs.

I can't see why people keep trying to construct some sort of false equivalence between where we were in 2019 and where Tampa was.

We made a choice, and it was because our window was closing and Tom was aging and it didn't make sense to bring back the band one more time.

Maybe we should have tried harder to keep him, but then again, here we are with Mac Jones...

 

[BTTA]

At the same time it's hard to deny he did change over the years and a lot of that was due to his wife's influence.

I don't think that's a terrible thing because one is supposed to learn things from one's life partner, while some Bradyites seem to think making such admissions some how is an attack on Brady's masculinity.

Objectively speaking, she was right. It was a good time for Brady to decide he had enough here and he should look for greener pastures. Clearly NE was falling out of their window while Tampa was just entering theirs. He got more money than NE was putting on the table, moved to a nicer climate, led his team to another SB win which further enhanced his legacy, and secured the highest salary ever for a NFL TV commentator. For all we know he might be the next Terry Bradshaw or Al Michels, collecting big paychecks deep into their 70s.

This is very insightful, about us and about Brady.

 

[oldrover]

I highly recommend some folks start using the feature @Ian recently implemented where you can ignore other posters for a specific thread - or you should just straight-up ignore those other posters - because this back-and-forth flame war between 4 or 5 specific people is tiresome. If you don't then we'll probably just start removing folks from the thread. This thread should only be a minor sh*tshow, not a total dumpster fire!

Thank you for this reminder, Ross!!!! That works WAY better at reducing agita here than what I was doing before...

 

[RobertWeathers]

You are also missing the obvious that they signed him to the dead cap deal after denying him the deals he wanted...Which, looking back wouldve been beneficial to the team. Again, I can link you things that show they literally had no money issues at the time, but you dont want it

************ wtf is your problem? Are you in denial or something?

I never said they had the cap space. I said they had the financial means to do a deal. Those are two different things.

They paid him what they wanted to for the reasons I mentioned.

They didn't sign him for the reasons I mentioned.

 

[Sect140]

No one is saying Brady was tampering. We all get the rule that only teams can do it. However, Brady was talking with NE's bitter rival while under contract with NE. So stop trying to absolve him based on semantics. Perhaps it was Miami that reached out to him initially, but BRADY AT ANY TIME COULD HAVE PUT AN END TO IT. He chose not to and continued discussions with the Dolphins over two years. It takes two to tango.

So I‘m guessing you still haven’t forgiven Bill for talking to the Pats before he walked up to the podium and and quit the Jets Job.

 

[Froob]

Revisionist history. Brady has never quit on any play, game or team. He's shown more dedication to his craft than any player in the history of the NFL. Universally adored by literally every teammate he's ever had. Model of professionalism. No evidence whatsoever that he ever acted like a "diva" in New England.

Belichick started quitting on Brady as early as 2014 when he drafted Garoppolo and was publicly talking up Brady's "age and contract" situation. Eventually Belichick only considered Brady worth one-year incentive laden contracts. Belichick knew the consequence of not offering Brady a multi-year contract... they put it in the final contract allowing Brady to walk for nothing after the 2019 season. Belichick grossly underestimated Brady's ability to continue on as an elite quarterback... he just had the best back-to-back seasons of his career (in another uniform).

It must be difficult to stomach your own Patriots fandom when you can't stand the single most important person in the history of the franchise by far.


Fake outrage. Just an excuse to ridicule Brady, especially for you. Whatever conversations he had with Miami in 2019 were of no consequence to the 2019 season, not impactful for Brady, and rendered entirely meaningless after he signed with Tampa Bay.

Here's the end of the Patriots 2019 season:

Lost 28-24 to the Texans... Brady threw for 326 yards with 3 TD's while the defense gave up 4 TD's and a 140 passer rating to Watson.
Lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion.
Won vs the Bengals.
Won vs the Bills.
Lost 27-24 to the Dolphins... Brady gave them a 24-20 lead late in the fourth quarter and the defense couldn't stop Fitzpatrick on a 13-play 75-yard TD drive... all passing plays, Fitzgerald was 9-13 on the drive and looked like Dan Marino in his prime. This was the game too where the Patriots had a minute and all 3 timeouts remaining at the end of the first half and Belichick opted for 2 running plays and halftime.
Lost 20-13 to Derrick Henry... facing an inept quarterback and a one dimensional offense, the Patriots defense was completely helpless against Henry who entirely controlled the game.

So where in there exactly did Brady's conversations with Miami "take hold" and topple the season?

The defense did only give up 14 to the Titans lol. And they only gave up 20 to the Dolphins when you take away the pick six.

 

[catent]

So I‘m guessing you still haven’t forgiven Bill for talking to the Pats before he walked up to the podium and and quit the Jets Job.

Did Belichick engage in ongoing conversations with the Pats over the course of multiple months, all the while still coaching the Jets through an entire season?

 

[Ring 6]

Hahaha. Wow. Nice troll job.

The facts back it up. The timeline of Brady’s actions, behavior and comments line up perfectly. What else changed?

 

[All3Phases]

It’s really pretty simple.
The team with Brady limped through the second half of 2019.
There was zero cap room to improve the team in 2020 even without paying Brady.
The 2021 team improved by having over 40% of the snaps in both sides of the ball played by new additions, and 75% of that was fueled by the money they didn’t pay Brady.
The team is rebuilt.
Had Brady stayed it would not be and we’d be a team trying to rebuild around a 43 year old qb.
We would have won nothing if we kept him and we are miles ahead right now of where we would have been.

The team signed him to the dead money deal because they refused to sign him to a multi year deal. Saying they had to money in 2020 for Brady is laughable, as they Franchised Thuney, signed Mccourty and gave Chung and Gilmore additional money after Brady signed with TB. They spent 160$ mil gtd in FA in 2021, youre acting like Brady taking up a small % of that wouldve prevented them from building a team. The rest of what you said can only be proven in an alternate dimension where you can see hypotheticals play out in front of you

 

[Bill Lee]

No, we get another SB, and the only team with 7. Then, both Bill and Tom retire walking into the sunset, holding hands.

 

[All3Phases]

************ wtf is your problem? Are you in denial or something?

I never said they had the cap space. I said they had the financial means to do a deal. Those are two different things.

They paid him what they wanted to for the reasons I mentioned.

They didn't sign him for the reasons I mentioned.

They didnt sign him because they didnt want to. You created an excuse to ease your pain. They spent amongst the bottom of the league in real cash spent during the period you mentioned. Nothing you said adds up. Sorry