The NFL announced yesterday their punishment of Tom Brady and the New England Patriots for their roles in last season’s AFC Championship Game, or as it’s better known now as Deflate-gate. Brady will start off the season with a four-game suspension, and the Patriots will be fined $1 million, and forfeit their 1st round and fourth round draft picks in 2016, and 2017.
Given the punishment, was the NFL fair, or too harsh on Tom Brady and the New England Patriots?
The suspension of Tom Brady WAS too harsh. That suspension doesn’t fit the crime with respect to Brady. A game or two sounds right to me, for a crime that almost everyone has said, is not that big of a deal.
For me, where the NFL missed here was in dealing with Bill Belichick and the Patriots franchise.
In dealing with “Bountygate,” Sean Payton was hit with a full year suspension by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. And while the premise of saga is infinitely worse than with “Deflategate,” Payton was hit with the suspension for what was, essentially, a lack of institutional control, in spite of his having no direct knowledge of the wrong-doing.
The Patriots are monster heels in the world of the NFL. And that’s more for their serial breaking of rules with no regard for being caught or the repercussions of such, as opposed to taking advantage of a crappy division over and over.
For the National Football League and Goodell to not hold Belichick accountable in a similar “unknowing” matter in which they held Payton accountable is extremely poor form.
Goodell hit the Patriots a $1,000,000 dollar fine, which is pocket change for them, and zero deterrent for breaking more rules. And the only real damage to Belichick was a loss of two draft picks.
Want the Patriots to stop cheating? Fine the franchise what is equal to this year’s cap number ($143.2 million), suspend them from taking part in next year’s draft, or being able to use those picks as trade pieces, suspend the head coach for the entirety of the upcoming season, suspend the quarterback for the first 3 games of this season, black-out their games nationally for a full season, and from prime-time games (Thursday, Sunday night and Monday night) next season.
Then, let’s see if they keep cheating.
Deflate-gate still sounds like something that occurred at a Nascar race, not the NFL. Every time I hear sports analysts discuss the events that transpired during that game it makes me laugh. Comments like “I think both teams should be able to check out each others balls before the game” just doesn’t make for a respectable sounding sports opinions to me. Now as far as the issue of whether or not this punishment was fair or not, I don’t think it was very fair at all.
First of all, the NFL needs to show consistency on how they deal out punishment. Sean Payton knew nothing of Bounty-gate and was suspended for an entire season, and several players careers were ruined because of it, and what they did was far worse than deflating a bunch of footballs. If Belichick didn’t know this was going on (like Peyton didn’t), why is he not held to the same standard? Especially considering this is not the Patriots first attempt at cheating. Remember Spy-gate? Thought so.
Lastly, the NFL seems to be in the middle of a public relations nightmare as of late coming off things like Aaron Hernandez, Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, and all of the concussion Lawsuits. I truly believe the NFL is responding this way out of sheer panic, and to pander to the mainstream media so that it can stay out of it’s crosshairs.
Of course what Tom Brady and the Patriots did was wrong, and I am certainly not advocating cheating in professional sports. They should be punished, but not to the extent that they have been. If all of the bad press that the NFL has gone through lately not ever come out, the punishment for this would not have been so severe. And honestly does anyone actually think it’s a coincidence that the very first game that Tom Brady plays in after his suspension is against the very team he cheated against!?
Real subtle NFL!
matthewsprayberry
I am a huge fan of my wife, my wonderful daughter, baseball, old school wrasslin', movies, and friends. Dislikes? The killing off of Quicksilver (Oops…too soon?), People who don't tip, Reality TV, and Daredevils new costume (I'm sorry it just looks stupid).
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