If Roger Goodell Were To Return Patriots' First-Round Pick, Here's What He'd Say
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Et tu, Peter?
That must have been what Roger Goodell felt when he awoke Monday morning to learn that even the delightful Peter King had joined the enlightened crowd of folks who know that for all the bluster and fireworks from "DeflateGate," the league actually never proved anything and really never had a right to levy harsh punishments on the Patriots. Goodell may have bamboozled Robert Kraft with an olé following a rumored quid pro quo agreement, thereby making the Patriots look like they were accepting guilt, but that didn't change the lack of damning evidence discovered during the multi-million dollar NFL "investigation."
As a result, with the season now over and the draft on the way, people are starting to catch on the idea of, "Wait ... why exactly are the Patriots not picking in the first round?"
King wrote: "Based on the weight of the evidence from the past 13 months, and that weight being circumstantial and not convincing, there's one conclusion I've reached entering the 2016 draft season: Roger Goodell needs to give back the picks."
Reacting to King's story on ESPN's "Pardon The Interruption," Tony Kornheiser said: "I think he should [return the picks]. I don't think he will. ... I think it is faulty science. I don't think it was ever proven that the balls were manually deflated in the way that it was accused. ... [Goodell] is wrong about everything!"
Over on CSNNE, Gary Tanguay said: "Remember this day, because Goodell is on a short leash. ... The attack on Goodell is starting with Peter King. ... Other owners are behind this. This is the beginning of the fall of Roger Goodell."
Strong, perhaps, but not completely misguided. The reality is that the commissioner of the NFL has zero credibility, and that has been the case ever since the bungling of the Ray Rice situation. He acted reprehensibly and thought he'd get away with it, but he got caught in the midst of a scandal which he and the Ravens hoped would just get swept under the rug. He went through the motions of launching an "investigation" into his office in order to save his job, but everybody paying attention from that date on knew that the commissioner had no integrity and no credibility.
That issue was remedied for a brief time when Goodell went after the Patriots and his good buddy Robert Kraft, but again, to anyone paying close enough attention, it was clear that the commissioner made several egregious missteps throughout the entire crusade.
While Goodell's job is not in imminent danger, the case remains the same as it has been since the Ray Rice fiasco: At some point, when the league faces a real, major crisis that does not involve air pressure in footballs, the owners are going to need a commissioner with credibility. Then, and only then, will the owners make a change. For them to do so now, when the need is not pressing and the money is flowing in by the billions, would only result in unnecessary bad PR for the league.
Likewise, most everyone agrees that Goodell will never willingly return the picks he took away from the Patriots, because he simply would not be able to properly explain away the PR nightmare that would follow.
To illustrate just how embarrassing it would be for Goodell to take back any of his unwarranted and heavy-handed punishment, here's a sample speech of what Goodell would have to say in announcing the decision.
As a reminder, that decision will almost assuredly never happen, and the following words are theoretical.
Dear NFL fans, owners, players, and most of all, the New England Patriots,
I was wrong. Simply put, I was wrong. I let accusations based on questionable suspicions get the best of me. I lost control of my employees. I let a small story spiral out of control, all in the name of media attention and all so that I could restore my reputation. But I was wrong.
It began before the alleged violation even took place. When Colts GM Ryan Grigson sent an email to Dave Gardi and Mike Kensil, accusing the Patriots of being "well-known" football deflators, I should have been looped in to the conversation. There's no excuse for me to have been excluded from the conversation, considering this was a week when my league held just two (2) total games. These were the biggest games of the year, and if I really believed that potential manipulation of the PSI of footballs was akin to a player taking steroids, I should have been involved.
Instead, the email was forwarded to James Daniel, Dean Blandino and Alberto Riveron.
I have no excuse for not knowing about this email ahead of time, because as I made clear in my Bountygate ruling, ignorance is not an excuse.
And if I had known about it, I or someone on my staff should have raised questions about these suspicions in the first place. The Colts claim they grew suspicious of the Patriots' inflation practices based on intercepted footballs from the teams' meeting in Indianapolis. Yet in that game, it would have been Colts employees handling the Patriots' footballs. So the suspicions made little sense, and the league should have asked more questions from the Colts instead of feeling flattered by Grigson's "vigilant stewards" of the Shield line.
After that, I still failed numerous times as my employees failed to properly monitor the situation. If it were important to the integrity of the game that the game balls have a certain PSI, we could have made sure the footballs used were in range. Referee Walt Anderson should have used the bag of 12 backup footballs if he was as upset about losing the football as the Ted Wells report claims he was. Instead, knowing the accusations, and knowing the footballs disappeared from the officials' locker room, the officiating crew allowed the footballs to be put into play in the biggest game of the year. That is a failure for my employees, and I take the blame for that.
Additionally, the scene at halftime was remarkably unprofessional. From Grigson barging into the box with Kensil and Troy Vincent, to the rush to get down to the field, to the hasty efforts to measure the footballs, to Kensil reportedly taunting the Patriots and saying "You're in big [expletive] trouble," this was not a scene of great integrity.
And above all else from that halftime scene, I am responsible for all of these accusations flying around the minds of my employees without even one of them considering that natural environments have an effect on the air pressure inside footballs. We all overlooked something that appears in the textbook for every introductory physics class in the world. That is a back-breaking mistake, and as the leader of this great company, I must own the fact that we were unaware of such a basic scientific reality.
Of course, from there, it only got worse. I could have done the right thing. I could have sent a stern warning to the Patriots, noting that they had been accused of something which we could not prove. I could have gotten away with applying a reasonable fine, because the balls were low at halftime, and it could be taken as a sign that we would be treating any potential future violations seriously.
I could have told the Patriots that we'd be paying extra attention to their footballs in the future and that we'd be implementing league-wide protocols for the pregame handling of footballs. A specific protocol was something that our league was lacking, and it was something that would allow potential manipulation to take place. I could have announced the day after the game that we were aware of the accusations but given our lack of recorded pregame measurements and the way we overlooked basic science, there would be no way we could prove that anything took place. I could have prevented Dean Blandino, the head of our officiating, from lying publicly before the Super Bowl.
Instead, I launched an over-the-top investigation, one which I paid as much or more than $5 million to take place, and one which would eventually paint the Super Bowl champions and their Hall of Fame quarterback as dirty cheaters. This was wrong.
But much worse, I allowed one of my employees -- I suspect it was Mike Kensil, though I never properly investigated -- to leak false information to Chris Mortensen. This information turned "DeflateGate" from a quirky, interesting story into a full-blown national controversy, one that led the national news programs. The false numbers made it impossible for science or the Patriots to explain the PSI of their footballs without admitting to manual deflation. It put the Patriots on the defensive. And not I, nor anyone from my offices, corrected this information on the record. As evidenced by multiple corrections to false reports in the days since last January, it's clear that my league is certainly capable of responding to and correcting misinformation that's in the media. Yet on this one, we remained silent for months.
Not only that, but we also fought the Patriots tooth-and-nail about releasing the correct information. This was wrong. We did not do what was right, and we disrespected The Shield. If our mission had truly been to seek the truth, we would not have done that. For this, I take responsibility. I was wrong.
Further, I completely and utterly failed when my senior VP of football ops, Dave Gardi, sent a letter with false information to the Patriots. That letter said that none of the Patriots' footballs measured at halftime fell within the allowed range, and that all of the Colts balls that were tested did fall in the range. Additionally, the letter stated that one of the Patriots' footballs was measured at 10.1 PSI. In fact, zero of the 22 readings taken showed a measurement of 10.1 PSI. The lowest reading came in at 10.5 PSI, and only six of the 22 readings came in under 11 PSI. Additionally, three of the eight measurements taken on the Colts' footballs came in at under 12.5 PSI, so Gardi's information there was false too.
This was a letter written to the Patriots to explain why an investigation was taking place and to get them to open their doors to our investigators. Frankly, this was such an egregiously deceitful action by a senior employee of mine, that it would be sensible for me to resign from my position. I am not doing that today, but I will agree to taking a major pay cut for this offense. When a high-ranking NFL official communicates with a team in such a deceitful fashion, it does not look good for anybody involved with the league. That ultimately is a reflection of me, and that's just not an acceptable image that I want to represent the NFL.
Again, let me reiterate: I am at fault for so much of what took place last January, and though I have never before accepted any responsibility, I am doing so now.
Of course, my failures as a dignified leader did not end there.
I failed to publicly address the actions of my employee who was stealing footballs during the game in question and thus raised red flags about the football protocol in the biggest game of the year. In fact, it was the Patriots who raised concerns about the handling of kicking balls that night. I did not properly explain to the public that one of my employees was engaging in some shady business. For that, I was wrong.
I failed to publicly disclose that Jeff Pash, the general counsel for the NFL, edited the final draft of Ted Wells' report before it went public. Instead, I touted the "independence" of Wells and his report as often as possible. This was deceitful and wrong. I am ashamed.
I released the Wells report without key information from referee Bill Leavy. He was in charge when the Patriots' footballs were pumped up as high as 16 PSI. He was interviewed by Wells' team, but his testimony appeared nowhere. During the offseason, we moved him from the field to the front office, giving him a supervisor's role without ever publicly addressing how or why the footballs were inflated so high in Week 7. Considering I made such a big deal about footballs being below the allowed level, I should have made just as big a deal about footballs being over the allowed PSI level. A hypocritical leader is no leader at all. For that, I have failed the NFL.
I relied on the science of Exponent, despite the company proving why it had such a bad reputation for providing whatever answers were wanted by whoever was writing checks with their name on it. While most of the scientific errors flew right over the head of the average American, other deceitful procedures were obvious. Most notably, they manipulated photos to try to paint Anderson's forgetfulness as possible. This was incredibly dishonest and I am mortified that I based my historic level of punishment on such a preposterous "scientific" study. I will take this shame to my grave.
This was, of course, only the beginning of my misbehavior. At that point, I was in too deep to turn around, so I doubled down. I finagled a way for Troy Vincent to issue the punishment to Tom Brady, so that I could serve as the arbitrator in the eventual appeal. I had grown tired of legal professionals overturning my decisions. From Judge Barbara Jones in the Ray Rice Case, to Judge David Doty in the Adrian Peterson case, to the most back-breaking moment of my career, when my idol Paul Tagliabue overturned my Bountygate suspensions, the losses became too much to bear. So, I rigged the process so that I could serve as the "independent" arbitrator.
Looking back at this, I cannot believe how childish this behavior was. If I truly believed in my decision, I would have believed it capable of standing up in an independent arbitration session. Instead, I gamed the system so that I could postpone any real independent judgment and therefore apply pressure on Tom Brady. I had forgotten about being right and instead focused only on winning. This was an incredible abuse of power on my part.
And in the appeal hearing, it became very clear that I was not suited for the job. My lack of legal background shone through, and the entire 10-hour procedure was unprofessional. It was not an effort to find facts; it was mostly a stage for my own lawyers to try to discredit every witness presented by Tom Brady and the NFLPA. Unsurprisingly, I eventually ruled to uphold my original decision.
In that letter to uphold my decision, I made perhaps my worst mistake. What makes it even tougher for me to accept is that for me, it was a repeat of history. In trying to justify my indefinite suspension to Ray Rice, I tried to paint the accused player as being a liar. I tried to say he was dishonest and evasive when questioned in order to make him look more guilty, thereby justifying my over-the-top suspension. I got called out by Judge Jones on it. It should have shamed me to the point where I'd never do it again.
But I did. After taking a full month to "decide" to uphold my decision, thereby applying pressure on Brady just before training camp opened, I wrote that Brady described his increased communications with John Jastremski as being mainly about preparation of footballs for the Super Bowl. This was intended to make it look like Tom Brady was lying to me. I knew that if the transcript from that appeal hearing ever went public, I would be exposed as a liar, but given that my team was ready to file the appeal in what should have been a friendly New York court, I liked my chances of that transcript remaining sealed.
Of course, Judge Berman ruled to unseal the transcript, and the world saw that I had lied. In fact, Brady had been more open about these discussions than I gave him credit for in my ruling. Even though I knew I could win the battle for public opinion with the sideshow that was the cell phone destruction, I couldn't help myself. I had to bend the truth to make myself look better. This is another offense for which I will volunteer to take a pay cut. This is not acceptable behavior for the leader of any major corporation.
From there, as you know, Judge Berman rightly ruled that I had overstepped my authority and that the discipline I imposed on Tom Brady was issued improperly. Likewise, I have come around to see that the totality of my actions was not becoming of a professional, honest, dignified leader with integrity, and so I am relinquishing the punishment which I applied to the Patriots franchise. They deserve to make their first-round pick, and I am the one who deserves to be punished.
I understand that many teams will be upset by my decision, but I am now, for the first time in more than a calendar year, doing what is right. Certainly, I believe those teams would not approve of this behavior from me if I were applying it on them, and so in the interest of fairness and honesty, I cannot in good faith enforce this penalty which never should have been issued in the first place.
The entire situation has been humbling for me, but I vow that I will learn from it and improve in my dealings as commissioner of the NFL. This has been my dream job for decades, and I do not want my tenure to terminate prematurely due to any unprofessional or dishonest dealings. I should be better, and I will earnestly try to be better in the future.
Yours humbly,
Roger Goodell
The script is there if Roger wants to read it. Just don't expect that to be delivered soon ... or ever. The picks are gone. There's no way Roger can go back now.
You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
