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Tom Brady left Roger Goodell no choice but to make an example of him over DeflateGate
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Forget Roger Goodell, the Colts or the media: Tom Brady has only himself to blame for the mess he finds himself in right now the wake of DeflateGate.
Roger Goodell threw the book at Tom Brady and the Patriots on Monday, fully inflated, hard as a rock, even though Brady doesn’t like his footballs that way. He gave Brady four games for Deflategate and took away a No. 1 draft choice from the Patriots and he fined the team $1 million. These are sanctions as tough as have ever been handed out in the National Football League, all the way back to when then-commissioner Pete Rozelle suspended Paul Hornung, another golden boy of the sport, and Alex Karras for a year for gambling.
This suspension may get knocked down to something less later. Maybe, if Brady fights this all the way, it may be knocked right out of the park. And people who still remember how Goodell made a mess of Ray Rice can rightfully and righteously wonder how the NFL commissioner now gives Brady twice for deflated footballs what he originally gave Rice for knocking out his fiancée one night in an Atlantic City elevator. Goodell and his league still hit Brady that hard now.
Hornung and Karras got a year from Rozelle back in the 1960s. Sean Payton, the coach of the New Orleans Saints, ended up getting a year taken out of his career for the scandal known as Bountygate, when the Saints were found to be handing out bonuses for laying out players on the other team, and a linebacker named Jonathan Vilma got a year as well.
MYERS: GOODELL'S PUNISHMENT OF BRADY ANOTHER BAD LOOK FOR NFL
But Payton, even as a Super Bowl winning coach, wasn’t the star of the sport that Brady has been, and still is, as big as ever because of the way he played in the fourth quarter of the most recent Super Bowl game against the Seahawks. It was different with Hornung, who was really known as the “Golden Boy,” a Heisman Trophy winner at Notre Dame and then became an NFL champion for Vince Lombardi’s Packers. He was that kind of star when Rozelle removed him from all of the 1963 season.
But even Hornung was never as big as Brady has been over the last 15 years in football, winning four Super Bowls and playing in two others, being a part of the most famous quarterback rivalry – him against Peyton Manning – in the history of his sport. Now he gets banged like this because of a dumb second-rate football crime, because of a rather arbitrary rule about air in footballs.
He gets hit this hard, after the most dramatic victory of his career, because it is impossible to read New York attorney Ted Wells’ 243-page report on Deflategate and possibly believe that a couple of equipment guys on the Patriots -- Jim McNally, John Jastremski (suspended now by the Patriots, indefinitely) – would have taken air out of footballs before the AFC championship game without Brady’s knowledge, or consent, or approval.
Mike Lawrie/Getty Images
The last thing Roger Goodell wanted was to pick a fight with the NFL's biggest star in Tom Brady.
You simply cannot read this report and believe Brady when he says he didn’t know anything about anything, which is what he started saying last January. This from a guy who when asked if he thought of himself as a cheater last January said, “I don’t think so.” From the start he never acted like someone falsely accused. When the league asked for text messages and emails possibly related to this event, he declined. You go ahead and keep thinking that somehow he was set up here, or railroaded.
And guess what? Goodell, no matter how tough he still wants to look, wasn’t looking for a fight like this with somebody like Tom Brady. Goodell frankly needed to go after a guy who is as much the face of his league as anybody, the MVP of the most recent Super Bowl, like he needs a hole in the head, especially after the year he just had.
RELATED: PATRIOTS FAN LAUNCHES GOFUNDME PAGE TO PAY DEFLATEGATE FINE
Here, by the way, is the letter sent by Troy Vincent, the NFL’s Executive Vice President of Football Operations to Brady:
“With respect to your particular involvement, the report established that there is substantial and credible evidence to conclude you were at least generally aware of the actions of the Patriots’ employees involved in the deflation of the footballs and that it was unlikely that their actions were done without your knowledge. Moreover, the report documents your failure to cooperate fully and candidly with the investigation, including by refusing to produce any relevant electronic evidence (emails, texts, etc.), despite being offered extraordinary safeguards by the investigators to protect unrelated personal information, and by providing testimony that the report concludes was not plausible and contradicted by other evidence.
“Your actions as set forth in the report clearly constitute conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of professional football. The integrity of the game is of paramount importance to everyone in our league, and requires unshakable commitment to fairness and compliance with the playing rules. Each player, no matter how accomplished and otherwise respected, has an obligation to comply with the rules and must be held accountable for his actions when those rules are violated and the public’s confidence in the game is called into question.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/lupica-goodell-no-choice-brady-article-1.2218456
See Lupica's below
Tom Brady left Roger Goodell no choice but to make an example of him over DeflateGate
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Forget Roger Goodell, the Colts or the media: Tom Brady has only himself to blame for the mess he finds himself in right now the wake of DeflateGate.
Roger Goodell threw the book at Tom Brady and the Patriots on Monday, fully inflated, hard as a rock, even though Brady doesn’t like his footballs that way. He gave Brady four games for Deflategate and took away a No. 1 draft choice from the Patriots and he fined the team $1 million. These are sanctions as tough as have ever been handed out in the National Football League, all the way back to when then-commissioner Pete Rozelle suspended Paul Hornung, another golden boy of the sport, and Alex Karras for a year for gambling.
This suspension may get knocked down to something less later. Maybe, if Brady fights this all the way, it may be knocked right out of the park. And people who still remember how Goodell made a mess of Ray Rice can rightfully and righteously wonder how the NFL commissioner now gives Brady twice for deflated footballs what he originally gave Rice for knocking out his fiancée one night in an Atlantic City elevator. Goodell and his league still hit Brady that hard now.
Hornung and Karras got a year from Rozelle back in the 1960s. Sean Payton, the coach of the New Orleans Saints, ended up getting a year taken out of his career for the scandal known as Bountygate, when the Saints were found to be handing out bonuses for laying out players on the other team, and a linebacker named Jonathan Vilma got a year as well.
MYERS: GOODELL'S PUNISHMENT OF BRADY ANOTHER BAD LOOK FOR NFL
But Payton, even as a Super Bowl winning coach, wasn’t the star of the sport that Brady has been, and still is, as big as ever because of the way he played in the fourth quarter of the most recent Super Bowl game against the Seahawks. It was different with Hornung, who was really known as the “Golden Boy,” a Heisman Trophy winner at Notre Dame and then became an NFL champion for Vince Lombardi’s Packers. He was that kind of star when Rozelle removed him from all of the 1963 season.
But even Hornung was never as big as Brady has been over the last 15 years in football, winning four Super Bowls and playing in two others, being a part of the most famous quarterback rivalry – him against Peyton Manning – in the history of his sport. Now he gets banged like this because of a dumb second-rate football crime, because of a rather arbitrary rule about air in footballs.
He gets hit this hard, after the most dramatic victory of his career, because it is impossible to read New York attorney Ted Wells’ 243-page report on Deflategate and possibly believe that a couple of equipment guys on the Patriots -- Jim McNally, John Jastremski (suspended now by the Patriots, indefinitely) – would have taken air out of footballs before the AFC championship game without Brady’s knowledge, or consent, or approval.
The last thing Roger Goodell wanted was to pick a fight with the NFL's biggest star in Tom Brady.
You simply cannot read this report and believe Brady when he says he didn’t know anything about anything, which is what he started saying last January. This from a guy who when asked if he thought of himself as a cheater last January said, “I don’t think so.” From the start he never acted like someone falsely accused. When the league asked for text messages and emails possibly related to this event, he declined. You go ahead and keep thinking that somehow he was set up here, or railroaded.
And guess what? Goodell, no matter how tough he still wants to look, wasn’t looking for a fight like this with somebody like Tom Brady. Goodell frankly needed to go after a guy who is as much the face of his league as anybody, the MVP of the most recent Super Bowl, like he needs a hole in the head, especially after the year he just had.
RELATED: PATRIOTS FAN LAUNCHES GOFUNDME PAGE TO PAY DEFLATEGATE FINE
Here, by the way, is the letter sent by Troy Vincent, the NFL’s Executive Vice President of Football Operations to Brady:
“With respect to your particular involvement, the report established that there is substantial and credible evidence to conclude you were at least generally aware of the actions of the Patriots’ employees involved in the deflation of the footballs and that it was unlikely that their actions were done without your knowledge. Moreover, the report documents your failure to cooperate fully and candidly with the investigation, including by refusing to produce any relevant electronic evidence (emails, texts, etc.), despite being offered extraordinary safeguards by the investigators to protect unrelated personal information, and by providing testimony that the report concludes was not plausible and contradicted by other evidence.
“Your actions as set forth in the report clearly constitute conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of professional football. The integrity of the game is of paramount importance to everyone in our league, and requires unshakable commitment to fairness and compliance with the playing rules. Each player, no matter how accomplished and otherwise respected, has an obligation to comply with the rules and must be held accountable for his actions when those rules are violated and the public’s confidence in the game is called into question.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/lupica-goodell-no-choice-brady-article-1.2218456
John Fanta @John_Fanta 
