Penalties being considered for the Pats - UPDATED 1/1/2020

Tottie · Dec 15, 2019

Nothing matters. Kraft Productions, guilty not guilty - it all makes no difference. It's obvious no harm was done and there was no intent. So now the NFL will continue and find another angle to do what it wants to do. This entire thing is only worthy of a fine because a 'rule' was broken even though no advantage was gained. Of course that's not acceptable and it was deemed unacceptable by the NFL before they even began their investigation. We all know how they operate, they work backwards from what they want the end result to be, just like they did in deflategate. Facts don't matter here.

Nikolai · Dec 15, 2019

If there's a significant fine, I'm definitely walking from the NFL sometime in the future.

I left baseball back in the 90s, for what seems to be less.

It'll be down to hockey...and maybe college football.

PP2 said:
They don't take orders from football operations- that'd be like the Army taking orders from the Navy.

A little more like the Army taking orders from the Chick Fil-A drive thru

Anyway...it all makes me sad...and hungry for a spicy chicken sandwich...but it's Sunday

Tottie · Dec 15, 2019

And the Bengals should be fined for conduct detrimental. They keep making noise about this for no reason. Showed the tape to your staff, Taylor? Really? What a smoke show.

sb1 · Dec 15, 2019

Link
NFL ponders penalties for Patriots over Spygate 2

Florio gets it.

This continues to be, or at least should be, the biggest factor in gauging punishment. If the Patriots are being truthful on that point, the penalty should be smaller than comparable precedent because comparable precedent involves violations that definitely were aimed at getting an advantage. This, if the Patriots are being truthful, clearly was not. If the Patriots aren’t being truthful on this point, they should be hammered by the league, both for what happened last Sunday and in light of their repeat-offender status.

The attempt to gloss over that critical distinction and to simply apples-to-apples compare New England’s infraction to other situations where there clearly was involvement from a team’s football operations could be the latest effort by certain forces who continue to resent New England’s success to whack them whenever and wherever the opportunity arises.

Tottie · Dec 15, 2019

sb1 said:
Link
NFL ponders penalties for Patriots over Spygate 2

Florio gets it.

This continues to be, or at least should be, the biggest factor in gauging punishment. If the Patriots are being truthful on that point, the penalty should be smaller than comparable precedent because comparable precedent involves violations that definitely were aimed at getting an advantage. This, if the Patriots are being truthful, clearly was not. If the Patriots aren’t being truthful on this point, they should be hammered by the league, both for what happened last Sunday and in light of their repeat-offender status.

The attempt to gloss over that critical distinction and to simply apples-to-apples compare New England’s infraction to other situations where there clearly was involvement from a team’s football operations could be the latest effort by certain forces who continue to resent New England’s success to whack them whenever and wherever the opportunity arises.

It's good to see him add some common sense to the situation, but it's hard to ignore the fact that when this broke he took advantage of it like everyone else with flashy clickbait headlines making it seem like the Pats were cheating. He was also a flaming clown in his segments.

DarrylS · Dec 15, 2019

archstanton543 said:
In Spygate there was a competitive advantage gained. You match down, distance, score and game clock to hand signals and defensive formations. Even BB admitted that he got at least a 1% advantage from analyzing all this film.

You should have used the actual quote, but never understood the advantage due to time constraints about getting the film ready for review..

"How much did this help us on a scale of 1 to 100?" Kraft reportedly asked Patriots coach Bill Belichick when the story came to light.

"One," Belichick replied.

"Then you're a real schmuck," Kraft said he told Belichick.

SHOWTIME15 · Dec 15, 2019

Fire the dumb producer, please. And his boss.

At this point a 100K-200k fine would be ok with me. A loss of a draft pick means everyone will think there was some sort of advantage the team was trying to gain...

Kontradiction · Dec 15, 2019

The team should be fined because the production team is a wing of the franchise. But a loss of draft picks would be utterly ridiculous since this wasn’t on the football operations side of the franchise. They had nothing to do with it. Of course, knowing the NFL, that’s what they will likely do.

SHOWTIME15 · Dec 15, 2019

I think this is somewhat like the Giants situation with the walkie talkies in that there was no intent to gain an unfair advantage (their headsets stopped working). In that case the league said there was no nefarious intent, but the Giants could have gained an unfair advantage by continuing to use the walkie talkies after the 15 second mark when headsets normally shut off. Here, they will say someone in the video department could have forwarded that video to the football operations people. Would not be surprised to see a fine of 250K.

Bonzo · Dec 15, 2019

It has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with optics / peer pressure: I for one would be somewhat astonished at this point if nothing happens to our picks.

This is the second time this year the team has been majorly embarrassed by its owner. (Finally - some common ground with Colts fans.) That it comes on the heels of a SB championship - and in the middle of a run at another - is so, so disappointing.

Patstastic · Dec 15, 2019

If the team is stripped of picks, they aren't able to appeal. That was in the last C.B.A.

Bonzo · Dec 15, 2019

Hammer of Thor said:
From LaCanfora’s article.

The Bengals have a copy of the roughly eight-minute tape, which sources said head coach Zac Taylor showed to his staff this week so that all would be aware of exactly what the Patriots may have had access to and to make any necessary changes to their signals or protocol ahead of their meeting with New England Sunday.

Good to see that it took this incident for Taylor to learn that he needs to change his signals from time to time. Another incompetent buffoon in charge of the Bengals.

Correct me if I'm wrong... but didn't the league seize the tape then and there? Somehow I doubt Goodell's next act was to FedEx it to Belichick direct. What information do they think we have?

PP2 · Dec 15, 2019

QuantumMechanic said:
Actually, according to KSE’s own website, KSE is a division of the Kraft Group, with that division being made up of the Patriots, the stadium, and a couple of other things.

Sports + Entertainment | A Family of Businesses

Anyhow, it sounds like the production company specifically is a part of the team, though not a part of the football ops part of the team.

While what the videographers did deserves a penalty (which in a sane world would be say a $150K fine and nothing else) because they’re part of the team, I will take the unpopular view here and disagree that the punishment shouldn’t affect football ops in the general case.

To be clear, the penalty shouldn’t affect football ops in this *specific* case because what they did only deserves a fine.

But I am not willing to say that something a non-football-ops part of a team does should never get a penalty that affects football ops.

Both football ops and non football ops are part of the same organization (the football team). Depending on the nature of the crime you may need to punish the organization hard enough so that it is incented enough to not let the bad act or something like it happen again. And that may mean letting some of the penalty fall on football ops, especially since that’s the part of the organization that generates the most value for the team.

Part of what makes the Kraft-BB relationship so unique is that Kraft is absolutely hands off as far as football operations. That's all BB's. The rest is Kraft's. The amount of latitude that BB has with football operations is unprecedented- why would that extend to any of the other aspects of KSE? It wouldn't and doesn't, and BB would have absolutely no interest in anything outside of football operations.

BB didn't hire that videographer, or give directions to that production or video- why should he or his department be punished? Why should competitive advantage be taken away from him?

Taking away a draft pick is directly punishing BB for something he didn't do and furthermore for something that he had no idea was happening.

Hammer of Thor · Dec 15, 2019

Bonzo said:
Correct me if I'm wrong... but didn't the league seize the tape then and there? Somehow I doubt Goodell's next act was to FedEx it to Belichick direct. What information do they think we have?

And if you recall, Judy Batista reported a few days ago that an NFL source told her that there wasn’t anything in the video that couldn’t be seen from other NFL video.

Zac Taylor is an absolutely incompetent buffoon. Glad he spent time on this instead of preparing and implementing a game plan for today.

SHOWTIME15 · Dec 15, 2019

Bonzo said:
Correct me if I'm wrong... but didn't the league seize the tape then and there? Somehow I doubt Goodell's next act was to FedEx it to Belichick direct. What information do they think we have?

The league has punished teams in the past if the intent of the violation was innocuous but the team could have done so for gaining an advantage. I am sure the league will consider that if the Bengals did not stop the Pats, the Pats video people could have forwarded the video to the football ops.

Bonzo · Dec 15, 2019

TommyBrady12 said:
The league has punished teams in the past if the intent of the violation was innocuous but the team could have done so for gaining an advantage. I am sure the league will consider that if the Bengals did not stop the Pats, the Pats video people could have forwarded the video to the football ops.

I was quoting a post about Zac Taylor feeling compelled to make adjustments because of the tape. ("They" = the Bengals, not the league.)

Hammer of Thor · Dec 15, 2019

Mike Reiss posted something quoting the Washington Post article and not LaCanfora’s, fwiw.

3. Waiting on NFL's ruling on investigation: It would be a surprise to me if the NFL's investigation into the Patriots takes much longer, as the issue doesn't seem to be what's on the tape, but more about the believability of the explanation. I thought former Patriots vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli captured the situationwell in his interview on ESPN Radio's Spain and Company program. It's hard to believe this was nefarious. Mark Maske, a veteran NFL reporter for the Washington Post, reported that the league is likely to penalize the Patriots and is “contemplating disciplinary measures in line with those imposed on teams in recent seasons for infractions of game-day rules … that could mean a fine in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and potentially the loss of reduction in value of a draft choice, typically a lower level pick.”

Patriots LB Dont'a Hightower keeps his motivation on locker door

luuked · Dec 15, 2019

TommyBrady12 said:
I think this is somewhat like the Giants situation with the walkie talkies in that there was no intent to gain an unfair advantage (their headsets stopped working). In that case the league said there was no nefarious intent, but the Giants could have gained an unfair advantage by continuing to use the walkie talkies after the 15 second mark when headsets normally shut off. Here, they will say someone in the video department could have forwarded that video to the football operations people. Would not be surprised to see a fine of 250K.

The important difference -- and Florio brought his up in the mean time -- is that in this case the football ops side of things was not involved whereas with the Giants the coaches were breaking rules.

I didn't really follow the entire pumping in crowd noise situation too closely but I'd think it is much closer to that.

RobertWeathers · Dec 15, 2019

Hammer of Thor said:
And if you recall, Judy Batista reported a few days ago that an NFL source told her that there wasn’t anything in the video that couldn’t be seen from other NFL video.

Zac Taylor is an absolutely incompetent buffoon. Glad he spent time on this instead of preparing and implementing a game plan for today.

He could have shut this down but chose to go nuclear. Dummy.

Family · Dec 15, 2019

luuked said:
What exactly would even be a suspension for "upper management" ? I mean since this is not a football ops situation I don't see who they want to suspend here ? Whoever runs the KSE projects in house ?

What an idiotic cluster**** the NFL is tieing itself into. Hand out a 50k-100k penalty and let that be it. But what am I expecting from the idiots that didn't believe in the IGL.

This is reminding me of Deflationgate in the sense that the league might be looking at it as a makeup call.

They were embarrassed by Kraft, but with questions of rights violations and the validity of the warrants, the league's hands were a little tied.

Whose name is on KSE? There's your suspension.

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