Shaky evidence, shady science and total disinterest in learning the truth are grounds for Roger Goodell to admit he erred by docking New England draft picks for Deflategate. Plus Mayock’s combine preview and more
Source: Roger Goodell should give back NFL draft picks to Patriots | The MMQB with Peter King
I can’t believe we have to keep talking about Deflategate, but here we finally have Peter King coming around to say the Pats should get their lost draft picks back. Mostly this feels like too little too late because let’s face it, the Pats are NEVER getting those picks back. Just wait until next week’s court arguments to see how firmly entrenched the NFL continues to be on their side. Each time we’ve heard from the NFL lawyers they keep making it sound like Brady did worse and worse. The Wells Report said he was generally aware. Cut to the NFL’s appeal and now Brady was at the center of an organized deflation ring. Yes, it’s a giant leap, made solely because the NFL wants to win their case. Not because they have any conclusive proof. They want to win, even at the expense of a slice of Tom Brady’s legacy.
The best we can hope for at this point is that Judge Berman’s ruling gets upheld, the NFL quietly swallows their medicine and we can bury deflategate once and for all, or at least until both the 2016 and 2017 draft when the Pats have vacated draft picks. Yeah I know, it’s bullshit. And that lost first rounder will have a tangible effect on the Patriots for the next five years.
The only small silver lining I can take from Peter King coming out with this take is that he essentially represents the casual mainstream fans. When the NFL was whipping everyone into a frenzy over Deflategate, Peter King was right there with them every step of the way. But now we at least have hope that the non-partisans can see through the NFL’s web of deception. That there are fans of other teams realizing that the Patriots got steamrolled and it could just as easily happen to them. Perhaps most disturbing is the lengths the NFL has gone to not for the facts, not for truth, but to prove their side even if it means planting false information in the press or at the very least letting it linger there for months without a correction.
We’ll always have opposing fans who throw Spygate and Deflategate in our faces. Whether or not those fans actually believe the Patriots last 15 years of success has been due to extensive and elaborate cheating plots, or it’s just an easy way to dismiss New England’s success and give Pats fans crap, will depend on how educated the fans actually are.
But Peter King speaks to and for a large number of low information football fans, and hopefully this piece does its own small part in putting Deflategate in the history books as nothing more than an overblown sham that the NFL was too invested in and too proud of to actually treat it as it should’ve been treated.
