That same article stated that the NFL has a really tough road to get this initial decision overturned.  Who knows, most people expected the judge to side with the NFL in this case.  But to have 2 out of 3 judges overturn a district judge's decision is extremely difficult according to joe blow legal guy's article.  

I can't shake the feeling that Karma is turning Tom Brady's ACL into oatmeal in a game he shouldn't be playing in next Thursday night. 

Goodell didn't have a factually strong enough case to justify a suspension. This is an embarrassment for him after flubbing the Bountygate and Ray Rice situations. Brady probably should have gotten a hefty fine and maybe a 1-2 game suspension IF he justified it as a reaction to Brady being uncooperative with the investigation. Brady would have appealed, knock it down to 1 game and the punishment would have been accepted.

Although I backed the NFL on this one, Goodell needs to go.

This will put them over the top again.

@ByRyanWood: Can confirm @RapSheet report that the Patriots claimed former #Packers third-round DT Khyri Thornton. He's on their 53-man roster.

Billy B wonders what TT saw in him.

 

TT might've mistakenly cut him.

 

Khyri could be the next Vince Wilfork.

 

Gotta check it out....

He did the same with Jerel Worthy, and others over the years that I can't recall right now. No question whatsoever that BB respects the work that Ted and Mike do. None.

Bill is just finishing up his efforts in matching- up the the video he took of the Packers defensive calls to the hand signals and the ILB checks

 

Belichick got a little bit more of the puzzle from Worthy and now some more from Thornton. Having to play with properly inflated balls this year means his offense is gonna need every edge they can find.

Don't forget he had Matt Flynn in for the first half of TC also

None of it is going to matter. They ain't making the Superb Owl again this year.

 

What is he going to do? Sell the info to the AFC Champ???

Losing Revis and Browner is really being glossed over by people analyzing the Pats.  You don't lose a historically great coverman and just assume "next man up".  And Browner is a damn good player (despite the fact he should be called for illegal contact on majority of plays), probably one of the best #2 CBs you can find.  They go from arguably the best 2 CBs in the league, to arguably the worst.  

 

As for Pats grabbing Thornton, sounds a lot like the Worthy move.  Probably some respect for TT but also have no doubt BB had his eye on Thornton in the draft.  Maybe they saw the same thing and BB wants to see for himself if Thornton is a lost cause.  

Spygate is back

 

An ESPN Outside the Lines report, citing interviews with more than 90 sources around the NFL, says that the Spygate cheating lasted “at least 40 games over a period of several seasons from 2000 to 2007,” and that the league never fully investigated all the accusations against the team.

 

According to the report, the taping of opponents’ signals reached the point where the Patriots had diagrams of the stolen signals that they could use during games.

 

snip

 

The report also says that other teams were much more upset about the Patriots’ cheating than they let on, because NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell convinced the rest of the league not to press the issue. Former Rams coach Mike Martz, whose team lost to the Patriots in Belichick’s first Super Bowl, said he was pressured by a “panicked” Goodell to issue a statement saying he was satisfied by the league’s investigation of the Patriots. Martz said he agreed to go along with Goodell’s request to issue a statement backing the league not because he was completely satisfied by the investigation, but because Goodell convinced Martz that a prolonged scandal could badly damage the league.

Was just going to post this, pduck.

 

Cites a lengthy article in ESPN the Magazine going into massive detail about the Patriots' surveillance state.

 

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/st...gland-patriots-apart

 

Devastating read. Billy B works every angle. 

Hmm.... does the SS show up at Belichick's door and give him the same choice they gave Rommel?

The taping is bad enough, the other stuff is worse:

 

From the article: http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/st...gland-patriots-apart

 

Several of them acknowledge that during pregame warm-ups, a low-level Patriots employee would sneak into the visiting locker room and steal the play sheet, listing the first 20 or so scripted calls for the opposing team's offense. (The practice became so notorious that some coaches put out fake play sheets for the Patriots to swipe.) Numerous former employees say the Patriots would have someone rummage through the visiting team hotel for playbooks or scouting reports. Walsh later told investigators that he was once instructed to remove the labels and erase tapes of a Patriots practice because the team had illegally used a player on injured reserve. At Gillette Stadium, the scrambling and jamming of the opponents' coach-to-quarterback radio line -- "small s---" that many teams do, according to a former Pats assistant coach -- occurred so often that one team asked a league official to sit in the coaches' box during the game and wait for it to happen. Sure enough, on a key third down, the headset went out.

 

But the Patriots kept doing it. In November 2006, Green Bay Packers security officials caught Matt Estrella shooting unauthorized footage at Lambeau Field. When asked what he was doing, according to notes from the Senate investigation of Spygate that had not previously been disclosed, Estrella said he was with Kraft Productions and was taping panoramic shots of the stadium. He was removed by Packers security.

 

That same year, according to former Colts GM Bill Polian, who served for years on the competition committee and is now an analyst for ESPN, several teams complained that the Patriots had videotaped signals of their coaches. And so the Patriots -- and the rest of the NFL -- were warned again, in writing, before the 2007 season, sources say.

 

 

This sh!t goes back to 2000. Think about that. 15 years of cheating. And this is just a snip of the bullsh!t that they pulled. And the league knew it. And let them get away with it.

 

It's getting to be a bigger and bigger clusterfu** for the NFL and Rog. There is no going back in this can of worms. And the NFL knows it.

If you're not cheating you're not trying. 

 

 

Mutually Assured Destruction. Patriots won the court battle so the league is airing all their dirty laundry. Is anyone surprised by any of these revelations? The Patriots are going to leak something that makes Goodell look worse and then the league will leak something else. It won't end until Goodell resigns and Belichick retires.

Wow.

I usually like reading Bill Simmons and he was one of the few to have the cajones to call out Goodell, but I would guess he won't have the guts to comment on this.

 

Grave Digger's right. This won't end until Belichick retires and Goodell resigns. I'll go one step further - it won't really end until Kraft gives up the Patriots (which will only happen when he dies).

 

There's also a pretty good argument for fraud as it relates to point spreads in Vegas. That's an angle that could be considered by someone.

 

That BB is a cheater? No. However, the DEPTH and the YEARS of the cheating with full knowledge by Rog how bad it was is yes surprising. And yes devastating to the NFL.

 

Think about teams who narrowly lost to these mf'ers and did so in key games including playoffs and SB.

 

The narrative that paralleled the Patriots' rise -- a team mostly void of superstars, built not to blow out opponents but to win the game's handful of decisive plays -- only increased rivals' suspicions. After all, the Patriots had won three Super Bowls by a total of nine points. Although Belichick admitted to Kraft that the taping had helped them only 1 percent of the time ("Then you're a real schmuck," Kraft told him), the spying very well could have affected a game, opponents say. "Why would they go to such great lengths for so long to do it and hide it if it didn't work?" a longtime former executive says. "It made no sense."

 

A Jerry Sandusky-type scandal won't bring down the Patriots at this point.

It shouldn't be too surprising, if the cheating leads to results you better believe he's going to keep it up until he gets kicked out of the league for it. It's a tough position for the league because the Pats are one of the most popular teams in the league which translates to dollars, but arguably one of the least respectable teams which hurts the leagues credibility overall. Teams that struggle to sell tickets like hosting he Pats because those games are often their biggest sellers, but is that enough to look past their cheating? If the last 15 years are any indication then the answer is yes. Popular teams like the Packers, Cowboys, Steelers, Broncos, etc would get the same treatment I'm sure. It would be interesting to see what the league would do if an unpopular, unsuccessful team like the Jaguars got busted for this?

I think the sophisticated nature of the cheating may explain one aspect of the Belichick era that seldom gets discussed. That is, despite the fact that he is one of the most successful coaches in NFL history, that virtually none of his assistants have had success elsewhere. Look at Walsh who was an offensive innovator and really developed the modern offense - he had multiple assistants who were successful elsewhere. Holmgren's assistants were then successful. It was because they were coaches who recognized strong football minds and then put them in a situation where they could develop professionally. Belichick's assistants from his time in New England have all flopped in other jobs (Crenel, Weis, McDaniels, Mangini). It could be it's harder to be successful if you don't know what's coming from the other side.

More coming out of Pandora's box....

 

Mike Martz was “shocked” by apparent changes to statement he gave to the NFL

Posted by Mike Florio on September 8, 2015, 10:41 AM EDT

As we try to digest this new ESPN Patriots Alleged Cheating Opus, I can sympathize with a three-foot snake that’s trying to swallow the leg of an elephant. Buried in the story is a nugget that could prompt someone to try to grab by the tail the tiger that is the NFL.

 

At some point after the Boston Herald reported in early 2008 that the Patriots had taped the Rams’ walk-through practice before Super Bowl XXXVI, a “panicked” Commissioner Roger Goodell asked former Rams coach Mike Martz to provide a statement “saying that he was satisfied with the NFL’s Spygate investigation and was certain the Patriots had not cheated and asking everyone to move on.”

 

So Martz provided a statement to the league. And ESPN showed the statement to Martz when interviewing him for the Patriots Alleged Cheating Opus. And Martz didn’t recognize portions of it.

 

“It shocked me,” Martz told ESPN. “It appears embellished quite a bit — some lines I know I didn’t write. Who changed it? I don’t know.”

 

And that was the end of it, as far as the ESPN Patriots Alleged Cheating Opus is concerned. There was no statement from the league office denying any changes to the statement. There was no apparent effort to procure the original statement, if there was one.

 

If Martz is right, that’s a huge deal. If the NFL changed in any way a statement from Martz that was used to placate Senator Arlen Specter and to block a Congressional investigation, this is the kind of thing that could turn the NFL into FIFA.

Will Ron Wolf be under consideration to fill the vacant role of Commissioner?

Go back to the  Packers / Patriots game last year and  the sincere respect  BB showed MM

There is a reason BB shows that level of respect toward MM.

I wish we could go back to that level of play across the league.  Alas, I guess that plan is moot.

Mike Martz's Actual Statement before the NFL edited.

 

"I'm shocked that an organization as proud as the New England Patriots would resort to this level of cheating.  There is no doubt in my mind that the Patriots, having taped our walk through, were much better prepared for all the TE reverses to the TE and our many H Back screens that were the hallmark of my awesome playcalling."

 

 

http://profootballtalk.nbcspor...mbat-patriots-spying

 

More info about how teams go out of their way to combat Pats cheating ways

 

EDIT - link fail

Not quite the same wow factor as the ESPN article today, but SI has a big piece which talks about how other teams take extra precautions when playing the Patriots. Obviously, there is a concerted effort by someone to leak damaging information.

 

http://www.si.com/nfl/2015/09/...-belichick-tom-brady

 

Some snippets:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Teams usually take 53 players to the game and announce, 90 minutes before kickoff, which seven are inactive. But sometimes, at Saturday-night meetings, Belichick tells his staff which players on the opposing team were not on the flight to New England, a source with knowledge of the meetings tells SI. It’s not clear how Belichick knows. But he does.

This gives the Patriots a few extra hours to adjust to any roster changes. There is no rule against this, though some would argue that it’s unseemly.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In 2010 the Broncos were caught filming a 49ers walkthrough in London. Denver’s coach at the time was Josh McDaniels, the Patriots’ offensive coordinator from ’06 to ’08. The Broncos’ video operations director, Steve Scarnecchia, had worked from ’01 to ’05 as a video assistant for New England, where his father, Dante, was a longtime offensive line coach.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, left accompanied by NFL lead counsel Jeff Pash

Sure looks extremely bad to me.

Transcript of the Goodell's resignation speech:

"Today I resign quit as commisioner of the NFL.  Frank(ly) - or whoever, I don't care who runs the league asylum from here on out.  Thanks a for the millions.  Bye."

       
       

http://deadspin.com/patriots-f...espn-repo-1729311526

I read about 5 minutes of the ESPN article and wow, this is all pretty damning.  a few thoughts:

 

-Totally makes sense why Goodell swept this under the rug.  This was big, made bigger b/c the Pats won 3 of 4 Super Bowls, the Pats are a flagship team in a big market (sorry, just the facts)and Kraft was a big time owner (heads the TV committee, or something like that).  This isn't something you want to get out.  

-Makes sense why Goodell was so pissed about deflategate.  I have no doubt he was irate that he cut the Pats so much slack and pretty much joined the cover up, and he finds out their still cheating.  It'b be like a judge illegally sweeping a drug charge under the table only to have a DUI come up a few years later - hard not to absolutely pissed and throw the book at them.  

-Interesting timing....no way Goodell leaks this as it makes him look even worse.  I really wonder how this all got out, or if OTL just did an incredible job of reporting (OTL is the most un-ESPN part of ESPN - they actually do good journalism).  

-Goodell needs to be fired.  I just don't get how the owners put up with this.  Yeah they're all making money but do they like this publicity?  At what point is the embarrassment enough?  

 

What a clusterf**k.  This is becoming almost too much to believe.  

This is why a simple coverup makes no sense.  Goodell could have chosen to keep it quiet, like the first substance use offense for a player, but had sanctions and monitoring in place.  You can keep it quiet but you can't turn a blind eye.  For the good of the sport something needed to be done. 

 

I think Goodell keeps his job as long as the TV $$ remains high. The current TV deals (for Fox, NBC, CBS) run through the 2022 season, ESPN deal is through 2021. Now, if advertisers start pulling out from games that could raise the pressure on the owners via their TV counterparts.

 

 

Somebody will take care of this quietly

 

In an unprecedented move, the Green Bay Packers carpet bombed every known and suspected home for New England Patriot insurgents.