OTL Report: Goodell's Handling of Deflategate was a "Make-up Call," After Letting Pats Slide On Spygate (Panthers Related)

[cbarrier90]

Yeah, it was the most egregious poo I've ever witnessed in pro football, it just happened to be my team at the losing end of it.

I knew poo was stacked against us when they opened up the game with that horseshit personal foul call on us and then IIRC, the very next play, Boldin made a catch, got up taunted the defender, and then headbutted him, unprovoked for good measure, as the same ref stood virtually between them lol.  It was unreal.

The officiating in that game was awful, but objectively speaking that Niners roster was absolutely loaded and still had Harbaugh and the Panthers were playing in their first playoff game in half a decade with a team on a Cinderella run similar to 2003. They were the better team.

Oh well. Revis and Wilfork are gone from the Pats and Brady/Belichick will probably soon follow. The Niners have imploded. All this while we're churning the bottom of our roster getting set for what looks to be a great era of Panthers football. Water under the bridge.

[rodeo]

I know nobody wants to hear this but filming practices from a building down the street isn't illegal, which is what they likely did to us. Filming signals from the sidelines wasn't made illegal until 2007, well after our Super Bowl.

[Montsta]

To be fair, it doesn't take cheating to know exactly what plays a John Fox-led Panthers team was going to run at any given time or in any given situation. Hell, on this very board during gameday chats we had guys guessing with probably 80% accuracy.

[Ivan The Awesome]

this is a bombshell and could be the end of goodell. somebody will have to fall on a sword over this and he's the only one to do it.

 

Wouldn't it be a surprise if he didn't fall on the sword? This makes me not want to believe in the NFL anymore. But eh, the other major sport I watch is worse off because of a swedish asshole that thinks he's the mafia. 

[CarolinaSamurai]

The officiating in that game was awful, but objectively speaking that Niners roster was absolutely loaded and still had Harbaugh and the Panthers were playing in their first playoff game in half a decade with a team on a Cinderella run similar to 2003. They were the better team.

Oh well. Revis and Wilfork are gone from the Pats and Brady/Belichick will probably soon follow. The Niners have imploded. All this while we're churning the bottom of our roster getting set for what looks to be a great era of Panthers football. Water under the bridge.

the problem we will never know if the 49ers were a better team. We had the officials take us out and that fact alone meant we weren't allowed to see who was better. Being removed from competition and just chaulking it up to they were better is severely diminishing the game. 

I know nobody wants to hear this but filming practices from a building down the street isn't illegal, which is what they likely did to us. Filming signals from the sidelines wasn't made illegal until 2007, well after our Super Bowl.

read the report. Come back and comment because its clear you didn't.

[Montsta]

I know nobody wants to hear this but filming practices from a building down the street isn't illegal, which is what they likely did to us. Filming signals from the sidelines wasn't made illegal until 2007, well after our Super Bowl.

I think what gets me more is them stealing play sheets from locker rooms and sending guys over to the other team dressed in NFL Photographer shirts. Legal or not, it's clearly a violation, that's why they staged the look and covered up their Pats logos. 

The fact that Mangini basically became a coach specifically because of BB and knew all the shady poo he had done, it's no wonder why the NYJ hate is so extreme from BB.

[CarolinaSamurai]

To be fair, it doesn't take cheating to know exactly what plays a John Fox-led Panthers team was going to run at any given time or in any given situation. Hell, on this very board during gameday chats we had guys guessing with probably 80% accuracy.

yes but calling out a run vs calling out protections, the running lane, the protections, the lead blocker, the exact routes and even changes at the line. That's different.

[Darth Biscuit]

I know nobody wants to hear this but filming practices from a building down the street isn't illegal, which is what they likely did to us. Filming signals from the sidelines wasn't made illegal until 2007, well after our Super Bowl.

I think what gets me more is them stealing play sheets from locker rooms and sending guys over to the other team dressed in NFL Photographer shirts. Legal or not, it's clearly a violation, that's why they staged the look and covered up their Pats logos. 

The fact that Mangini basically became a coach specifically because of BB and knew all the shady poo he had done, it's no wonder why the NYJ hate is so extreme from BB.

Two questions...

 

1) Did other teams have these same practices at the time?  I honestly don't know.

 

2)  Just because something isn't illegal, doesn't make it proper or moral, no?

 

 

This "it's not illegal" stuff is EXACTLY why I hate them.

[Ivan The Awesome]

"Then the Patriots' coach, Bill Belichick, the cheating program's mastermind, spoke. He said he had merely misinterpreted a league rule, explaining that he thought it was legal to videotape opposing teams' signals as long as the material wasn't used in real time. Few in the room bought it. Belichick said he had made a mistake -- "my mistake."'

 

lol wtf?! This guy man!

[Montsta]

The Patriots and their fans and apologist saying it isn't illegal is like when your little brother sticks his finger in your face and says "yeah, but I'm not touching you."

Sooner or later, you act like an asshole and you're gonna get punched. 

[pstall]

Roger will step down at the end of the year. Look for Troy Vincent or Condoleezza Rice's name to come up as successors. 

[SCP]

"We used to be a Pats family, but now we're a Lying Cheating Stealing Extorting family." 

 

[Dave Gettleman's Shorts]

The NFL is obviously rigged. It's all about the money.

[CoastalCat]

 

Edit: link is up - http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/13533995/split-nfl-new-england-patriots-apart

This is the best article I've read all year. It's long, but worth it. More Spygate details than I've ever seen.

"In fact, many former New England coaches and employees insist that the taping of signals wasn't even the most effective cheating method the Patriots deployed in that era. 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."