Robert Kraft acknowledged Monday he sent a letter (to Roger Goodell) and a prayer (to the heavens). The New England Patriots owner knows that neither stands much of a chance of being answered.
The Patriots' deflate-gate appeal strategy is all but over. The first- and fourth-round picks are gone. The NFL will continue to hunt Tom Brady to the end of the federal court system. Bob Kraft might as well have saved himself a stamp.
Kraft's public comments at the NFL owners' meetings in Boca Raton, Fla., weren't an update on how things are going in the case. Instead it was him letting Patriots fans in on the concession of defeat. His son, Jonathan, filled in any remaining blanks Tuesday when he told CSNNE's Tom E. Curran, "at some point you have to realize it's not going to happen." None of this is unexpected.
Last spring, Robert Kraft mistakenly was conciliatory and accepted NFL sanctions before investigator Ted Wells' report could be thoroughly deconstructed. Kraft later apologized to Patriots fans.
His only chance at redemption was the NFL testing the footballs this past season and understanding that Ideal Gas Law is real and thus no one tampered with the air pressure during the 2015 AFC championship game. Goodell had said he would consider an appeal if "new evidence" arose and this was New England's only shot at new evidence.
Of course, testing shouldn't have been needed. The "new evidence" is an agreed upon scientific fact since 1834. But the NFL isn't much for science, even simple stuff taught in high school physics. When the scandal began, the NFL executives in charge admit they had never heard of Ideal Gas Law. The Patriots figured if the league eventually saw for itself – saw footballs with psi levels in the 10s and 9s and even 8s, far below 12.5 – then it couldn't deny it.
The Patriots had science on their side, unless the laws of physics cease to exist inside Goodell's stadiums. If so, that would be a globally significant breakthrough.
"We requested at the beginning of the season that they test every game throughout the league," Kraft said on Monday.
New England wanted footballs from all 652 games checked, from August's Hall of Fame Game through February's Super Bowl because the more testing, the more data, the more transparency, the better. Release the info publicly and let scientists everywhere study it. New England knew it would prove its innocence.
It thought Goodell had naively walked into a trap. And he had.
Even though the NFL limited testing to select games, it rewrote the game operations manual to include specifics on everything, right down to how the gauges would be tested by the Wilson Sporting Goods Co. Unlike in deflate-gate, there would be a modicum of scientific method.
Most importantly, the league stated it would keep the measurements.
It was a direct reversal to the new operations policy. It made no sense. Goodell noted that there were no findings and there was never any intention to have findings. So were the measurements written on the referee reports or not? Did the NFL throw them out? Or did the refs decide to ignore protocol? And why demand they were written down and submitted if it wasn't a study? If they are there, why not study them now, as New England is begging?
"All game ball information will be recorded on the Referee's Report, which must be submitted to the League office by noon on the day following the game," the manual stated.
That's seemed pretty clear. Only the season ended and Goodell went on "The Rich Eisen Show" and in an impressively Machiavellian move, stated that the league never tried to collect data or study in game inflation levels of footballs this season. It was just, he claimed, conducting "spot checks."
"We do spot checks to prevent and make sure the clubs understand that we're watching these issues," Goodell said. "It wasn't a research study. They simply were spot checks."
It was a direct reversal to the new operations policy. It made no sense. Goodell noted that there were no findings and there was never any intention to have findings. So were the measurements written on the referee reports or not? Did the NFL throw them out? Or did the refs decide to ignore protocol? And why demand they were written down and submitted if it wasn't a study? If they are there, why not study them now, as New England is begging?
All unanswered questions that will likely remain unanswered.
At that moment the Patriots knew they were dead. Brady's appeal of his four-game suspension will go on as long as the NFL and NFLPA want to fight it out, but New England's path to reversal – the loss of a first-round pick this year, a fourth rounder next year and a $1 million fine – was effectively over. The Patriots could, technically, sue the league but as Jonathan Kraft noted, franchises aren't supposed to do that. Besides, the draft is next month; a court case would take years.
That Goodell completely reversed course without intelligent explanation hardly mattered. The NFL is well aware that many fans and football media are as ignorant or as bored of science as the league office. Destroyed cell phones are far more fun. Goodell effectively walked right out of the trap.
At this point Goodell has been accused in deflate-gate alone of inventing testimony, rewriting procedures and creating new punishments. What's one more thing?
Or two more, even.
On Monday the league's attorney handling its appeal of the Brady verdict responded in a court filing to four separate accusations that he lied to federal judges in a recent proceeding. His argument on one point was particularly noteworthy. He wrote he didn't state any untruths to the judges when discussing a portion of Brady's testimony, he simply repeated what Goodell had concluded was Brady's testimony.
Of course, Brady's actual testimony didn't match what Goodell said it did. It wasn't even close. But hey, what's the definition of true, anyway?
And you wonder why NFL owners are trying to move discipline away from Goodell's purview.
As for that football air pressure data that could make the NFL acknowledge the existence of a scientific law that every actual scientist for nearly two centuries has agreed upon?
It's never coming out. It's as simple as that. The Krafts know it.
"They have results," Kraft said on Monday. "But for whatever reasons they haven't shared them with any of us."
If they shared it, the Patriots could appeal and if the Patriots could appeal then the effort to get their draft picks back wouldn't rest on a stamp and a prayer.
No comments:
Post a Comment