Spygate 2 penalties announced.

Ridiculous but expected

TommyBrady12 said:

So on the day the Pats sign Cam Newton, the NFL decides to punish us?

At least Bill wasn't involved. If he were, he would have been suspended.

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What? The Pats signed Newton?! Would be nice if one of you guys could drop a PSA in the political forum to keep us up to date. It's a full time job in there posting news articles and tweets.

cardiak said:

The NFL has taken away 19 draft picks away from teams since 1980. 5 of those 19 picks (26%) were from the Patriots. No team other then the Patriots have lost a 1st round pick (we lost 2)

First round draft pick (spygate)
First round draft pick (deflate gate)
Third round draft pick (injury report fibbing)
Third round draft pick (tv crew filming)
Fourth round Draft pick (deflate gate)

Now compare a team like the Broncos who were caught paying both Terrel Davis and John Elway millions under the table to circumvent the salary cap and win back to back superbowls and their punishment??.... A 2nd round pick

NFL has it out for the Pats

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Despite their best efforts they have not been able to derail the Patriots..

All along have thought the intended target has been BB, fortunately he is smarter than the NFL "brain trust"....

Good thing about this happening now is that the Pats have about $100 million in cap space in 2021, so they will have a lot of options available to compensate for this loss..

Not too many fans like BB's draft pix anyway...

If the league really wanted to get under BB's skin they should have let us keep the draft pick and force Hard Knocks (if that even happens this year) on us as punishment.

The third rounder sucks but whatever at this point I am used to the league stealing picks for absurd reasons.

dreighver said:

If the team has any legal recourse, in terms of something in the CBA that allows them to recoup the draft pick assuming ironclad, objective evidence that the football operations staff had 0 to do with this, they absolutely should pursue that given the current state of affairs, COVID-caused slow offseason and so forth.

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Team has already said they will not contest this penalty.

sb1 said:

Team has already said they will not contest this penalty.

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There really are not many avenues to contest this. It is not like there is a CBA that sets out guidelines for owners or team ops.

What makes this a bit spicy is that it was actually a third party that screwed up. But in the end it still ends up being someone at Kraft Sports fault for either hiring bozos or not making sure they had enough training in a sensitive matter.

Sadly it is deserved for stupidity alone.

luuked said:

There really are not many avenues to contest this. It is not like there is a CBA that sets out guidelines for owners or team ops.

What makes this a bit spicy is that it was actually a third party that screwed up. But in the end it still ends up being someone at Kraft Sports fault for either hiring bozos or not making sure they had enough training in a sensitive matter.

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Agreed and I think the league recognized that with the video ban and training requirement and the hit to Krafts wallet. This of all organizations ought to know what it looks like to be filming a sidelines and maybe now they’ll be more careful about that.

Taking a 3rd rounder is probably appeasement to the Bengals and other teams who reportedly were furious about this. It sucks but it’s much better than what would have happened if they really did find a link to Belichick or decided to fabricate one.

sb1 said:

Taking a 3rd rounder is probably appeasement to the Bengals and other teams who reportedly were furious about this. It sucks but it’s much better than what would have happened if they really did find a link to Belichick or fabricated one.

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I totally agree that from the "repeat offender" angle and everything this is almost a best case scenario to expect with this particular league office. If they had found even one little odd thing this would have turned into yet another massive punishment.

luuked said:

I totally agree that from the "repeat offender" angle and everything this is almost a best case scenario to expect with this particular league office. If they had found even one little odd thing this would have turned into yet another massive punishment.

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Yup. I’ll be honest- if Bill really was stupid enough to be behind this or let it happen I’d want him gone. Can’t cheer for a cheater. I’m glad that isn’t the case and we can now move on. Good chance Pats turn Newton into a comp pick and basically get the 3rd rounder back anyway in 2022.

That's it.
I quit.
I'm done with NFL football.
Take care, See y'all.

Whatever, I’m used to it and oblige with a middle finger to the rest of the league.

sb1 said:

Yup. I’ll be honest- if Bill really was stupid enough to be behind this or let it happen I’d want him gone. Can’t cheer for a cheater. I’m glad that isn’t the case and we can now move on. Good chance Pats turn Newton into a comp pick and basically get the 3rd rounder back anyway in 2022.

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What does cheating even mean at this point ?

Multiple teams have been caught violating the CBA when it comes to practice times, contact and how much they can practice in full equipment. That's clearly giving them an advantage over other teams but nobody cares.

Teams have been violating the unallowed tech equipment rule on the sideline/boxes that might give them an advantage over other teams during the game. Nobody cared.

Teams have been over and underinflating footballs, purposefully building stadiums where the opponents have their sideline in the open sun or using non-allowed substances on their equipment and really nobody cared except that one time where thermodynamics were the actual culprit.

Teams have been trying to steal and decipher signs for decades. Nobody cared except the one time where a team had their video guy standing in the wrong place.

Others are abusing holes in the rules to let the time run down in their favor.

To me the only thing in recent years that ever rose to the level of actual "cheating" was Tomlin's tripping adventure. At least that is the only thing I can think of.

Everything else is just business as usual where everyone tries to find an edge.

lets get slurred speech Bob to do another "we're all Patriots" speech and we'll feel a whole lot better.

Horace's Ivories said:

lets get slurred speech Bob to do another "we're all Patriots" speech and we'll feel a whole lot better.

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You're a Patriots fan?

luuked said:

What does cheating even mean at this point ?

Multiple teams have been caught violating the CBA when it comes to practice times, contact and how much they can practice in full equipment. That's clearly giving them an advantage over other teams but nobody cares.

Teams have been violating the unallowed tech equipment rule on the sideline/boxes that might give them an advantage over other teams during the game. Nobody cared.

Teams have been over and underinflating footballs, purposefully building stadiums where the opponents have their sideline in the open sun or using non-allowed substances on their equipment and really nobody cared except that one time where thermodynamics were the actual culprit.

Teams have been trying to steal and decipher signs for decades. Nobody cared except the one time where a team had their video guy standing in the wrong place.

Others are abusing holes in the rules to let the time run down in their favor.

To me the only thing in recent years that ever rose to the level of actual "cheating" was Tomlin's tripping adventure. At least that is the only thing I can think of.

Everything else is just business as usual where everyone tries to find an edge.

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I know... but I'd definitely have an issue with it if Bill was behind this. Thankfully that's not the case and I'm glad the league basically confirmed it with the nature of this penalty without making up some BS as they've been known to do.

I really don't care and tbh after Spygate this team gets no leeway for anything camera related. They should be so far away from cameras that their players don't even do the SNF opening drive introductions.

Be glad it wasnt a 1st or 2nd and nobody got suspended.

sb1 said:

I know... but I'd definitely have an issue with it if Bill was behind this. Thankfully that's not the case and I'm glad the league basically confirmed it with the nature of this penalty without making up some BS as they've been known to do.

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Why did they take a draft pick if the football ops department had nothing to do with this? Make no mistake. They believe BB was behind this but don't have enough evidence to make that case.

archstanton543 said:

Why did they take a draft pick if the football ops department had nothing to do with this? Make no mistake. They believe BB was behind this but don't have enough evidence to make that case.

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I believe it's a bone they threw to the hyenas from other teams who were demanding blood. They were never going to get away scot free - the Bengals and other teams were furious about this and the league had to do something, and the Patriots technically are repeat offenders with the camera. The bulk of the penalty was to the video ops with the fine and the ban and retraining and that told us what they concluded imo.

Just waiting on what penalty the Ravens get for their illegal taping