Hurley: Here's How DeflateGate Ends
BOSTON (CBS) -- If we knew in mid-January that this quirky little story about slightly underinflated footballs would wear on for the next four months, perhaps we would have come up with a name less terribly stupid than "DeflateGate." Nevertheless, here we are on Day 121, and the saga lives on.
We've actually gotten to the point where two actual websites -- and two very popular websites at that -- compared the Patriots to a terrorist. Because ... well ... because everyone has lost their damn minds.
Fun stuff. This is why we all got into sports, isn't it?
Regardless, the spring owners meetings begin today, and they do so with "back-channel" negotiating taking place "behind the scenes" in "dark alleys" in corners of San Francisco that you do not ever want to see. In other terms, in the Patriots' effort to reduce last week's over-the-top punishment, things are getting real. (And now we have reports of hugging. Stop the presses.)
What's this mean? Well, The feeling I get is that Roger Goodell and the NFL are going to lose ... and Roger Goodell and the NFL know they are going to lose.
The Patriots, with their 20,000-word response, called the NFL's bluff on the Wells report. It is a junk document -- anyone with half a brain who carved an hour out of his or her life to read the thing could easily see that -- and the Patriots outed it as such. It reached junk conclusions based on junk inferences, and it hired a junk scientific consulting firm in order to confuse the masses. Nothing in that document holds any legal bearing. It provided a captivating narrative but little in the way of facts or evidence.
It was intended to intimidate the defiant Patriots. Instead, it seems to have worked to empower them.
Roger Goodell is not a complete idiot. (Hey! Save it.) He is aware of his history with appeals. The Saints players appealed their suspensions, and they all won. Ray Rice took him to court ... and won. Adrian Peterson took him to court ... and won.
And those last two were folks who had committed crimes, and video and/or photo evidence of their crimes existed. Despite that, they still beat Goodell in court. That's just how unfair the punishments issued by the unchecked Goodell have been.
The difference with those two Dorito Dinks is that nobody feels sympathy for grown men who assault their wives and children, respectively, with their fists and with sticks, respectively.
But Tom Brady? He might have asked a part-time employee, by way of an equipment assistant, to slightly let air out of some footballs, likely as a response to NFL officials' OVER-inflating balls earlier in the season. And for that, he gets hit with a four-game suspension?
You think this punishment is going to hold up in any court?
Even the local kangaroos are chuckling.
The NFL had hoped that by issuing a four-game suspension, they would get Brady to squirm and admit to something. Again, the NFL seems to have inspired the opposite result.
After the NFL showed its hand, Brady immediately knew:
1. The best "evidence" against him relied on a "deflate" text message in May. But if Jim McNally deflated footballs regularly, why and how did footballs get jacked up to 16 PSI in Week 7 vs the Jets? Was the Deflator running late to work that day?
2. The other bit of "direct and inculpatory" evidence (Ted Wells' comical own words) is a text from McNally to John Jastremski during the game in Green Bay. Jastremski doesn't handle the footballs on the road. Good stuff.
3. The origins of the Colts' suspicions about underinflation stem from the examination of two intercepted footballs from Week 11. That game was played in Indy, so Colts employees handled those balls, proving this whole damn thing is based on lies.
Brady's going to win his appeal -- eventually. There should be no doubt about that.
So with the news of the back channel negotiating (and hugging), Roger Goodell's backtracking has begun. He knows he is toast, and he knows that his iron fist announcement of "Troy Vincent's punishment" solely served the purpose of a press release. It was never intended to stick.
It was the starting point for negotiations -- these very negotiations which have apparently already begun -- for Goodell to save face, to still point the finger at one team and one player to cover for the fact that his league had no protocols and no standards in place for this particular issue. It is an issue that he allowed to balloon out of control and cast an air of negativity around his league for months.
A good, intelligent commissioner would have addressed this issue before it ever became a national story. He would have released a statement on Jan. 19, saying, essentially, "We have found that some of the footballs were below the allowable PSI limit. We're going to fine the Patriots $25,000 for this fact, and we're going to look into our own procedures to find holes in our protocols for pregame football preparation that can be fixed and/or improved. Also, consultations with physics experts have revealed to us information about changes in air pressure, of which we were never aware prior to now. Lastly, we urge all parties -- whether that be team personnel or league personnel -- to refrain from rushing to the media with incomplete bits of information. It's integral to our league that we be able to address matters privately before invoking a public frenzy."
Instead, Goodell let this thing spiral out of control in a matter of days, with one of his employees (presumably, because nobody else would have been privy to such information) leaking false information to ESPN, thereby turning PSI: Foxboro into a full-blown national crisis.
So, how does this all end? That is why you came here, isn't it?
It ends like this: The Brady suspension is disappearing entirely. Brady is still claiming 100 percent innocence, and he is going to fight this thing all the way down. Innocent or not, he knows the league has no damning evidence on him.
Brady will be playing on opening night, when the Super Bowl banner gets raised in the southeast corner of the end zone.
Now, I doubt that will come directly as a result of these double-super-secret-behind-closed-doors-hush-hush meetings, but it will come eventually. I do not believe the league is ready to cancel this soap opera just yet, so the longer that fight goes, the better it is for the league to build momentum toward that season kickoff event. The opening night of the NFL season will also serve as the series finale for DeflateGate. How perfect.
The rest of the negotiation? Ultimately, that will come down to whichever side is willing to shrink its ego ever-so-slightly enough to reach a reasonable solution. (*See update at bottom of post*)
The Patriots have to work to get back their first-rounder. The only first-rounder taken away from any team came when the Patriots were caught red-handed in 2007 and admitted as much. They were penalized that first-round pick for openly defying a memo from the league office. Right now, they were penalized a first-round pick for ... maybe doing something ... which easily could have been stopped, prevented and/or fixed by any number of NFL employees who played essential roles in the handling of footballs that night at Gillette. First-rounders can't be docked on the grounds of maybe. One would have to think that the first-round pick is going back to New England.
Likewise, one would have to believe that the fine will be paid by the Patriots. Perhaps if maintaining complete innocence continues to be of chief importance to Robert Kraft, this will be a sticking point. But if he wants what's best for his franchise, he'll pay up and probably even let the fourth-rounder go. (Bill Belichick would just end up using it on a long snapper from a service academy anyway, so what's the diff?)
If Kraft still wants to maintain the perception that absolutely no tomfoolery took place while doing what's necessary to make this thing go away, he can say that he accepted this part of the punishment for his team's eventual antagonistic response to the league investigation. "Though we felt the investigation took a turn for the unfair, we still accept the league's assessment that we could have responded more favorably, and so we accept the punishment," he could say.
Goodell and Kraft will shake hands, play nice, and swear their relationship remains strong. There is much too much money being made here to throw it all away over some poor guardianship of footballs prior to a football game which was decided by a final score of 45-7. They will move on and continue to be very, very (very, very) wealthy men.
Now, this is not to say that this will all end soon. It's very clear that we are well past the climax of this tale -- that came when the league issued its self-congratulating press release to punish Brady and the Patriots. It's unclear if we're still in the falling action or if we're on to the dénouement. (Thank you to my high school English teacher for helping me write this story, 15 years later.) Whatever the case, we're inching closer toward that resolution, and the real fireworks of this mess are over.
But that does not mean the soap opera will end. Oh no -- we've got several episodes remaining. There will be mini-camp in mid-June -- What will Brady say? Once training camp opens in late July, the national news correspondents will flood the Gillette Stadium press room to ask some ridiculous questions. The spotlight will continue to glow brighter on Brady as the preseason rolls along, and it'll all lead up to that opening night.
The NFL can milk the drama all summer. You don't think that Week 1 game is going to smash ratings records?
Patriots vs. Steelers.
Rage-Filled Tom Brady vs. The World.
Kraft vs. Goodell.
Opening Night. Fireworks. Banner. Revenge.
Is there any chance that anyone chooses to not watch that game?
Come September, just as it's been since January, DeflateGate will win. DeflateGate always wins.
We are all so very stupid, aren't we?
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here. You can email him or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
UPDATE: Robert Kraft spoke on Tuesday in San Francisco and announced he would "reluctantly accept" the NFL's punishment, despite disagreeing with it. So ends one part of the DeflateGate saga. Tom Brady will continue to fight his suspension.