Around the NFL - Week 1 & 2

[FAH1223]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/Deadspin/status/641255589637713921[/tweet]

Hope the Steelers beat the Patriots this week... just cause

[crkone]

I love the deflection/trolling in the comments. "Like going 66 in a 65." lol

[emunney]

So who in the league office decided they would look better if they leaked 8 year old dirt? Goodell is a resilient MF but I think this is curtains for him and Pash.

[MickeyDavis]

Go Steelers, Chargers, Niners.

[zmanishere11]

Maybe we should just re-title this or start a new thread - seems worthy.

For those of you without the time to read, I will sum it up for you:

Goodell was Robert Krafts guy

Goodell did Kraft a solid with the spygate thing by essentially not investigating it. Had it actually been investigated, you would have had the result of every Super Bowl they've won under serious question.

This came with a warning - don't ever even put me in a position to have to question whether you broke the rules again.

They did anyways (deflategate)

Goodell drops the hammer. Some courts overturn it. Some pissed off people release some more info about how big of a cheater Belicheck and the Patriots have been over the years.

Can't wait to see how it plays out. I hate the Patriots so much

[crkone]

On a side note, kudos to the Packer security guard that first caught the sneaky bastard.

[MartyConlonOnTheRun]

I'm ok with the signal stealing since it is something on the field and can be seen anyways. Granted they took it to the extreme but you that is something that could be studied with enough research.

The thing that really is crazy is the stealing of playbooks/scripts from locker rooms/hotels and the jamming of the radios. That is cheating on the level of sabotage. Really no gamesmanship in that at all.

[MickeyDavis]

That's a great article. **** the Patriots.

[crkone]

I'm ok with the signal stealing since it is something on the field and can be seen anyways. Granted they took it to the extreme but you that is something that could be studied with enough research.

The thing that really is crazy is the stealing of playbooks/scripts from locker rooms/hotels and the jamming of the radios. That is cheating on the level of sabotage. Really no gamesmanship in that at all.

I feel all are pretty bad. They would not have been able to steal the signs without video taping and correlating them to each play which was explicitly against the rules. This was before the plays could be called in electronically (with Belichick originally voting no on allowing the helmet speaker for a defensive player).

EDIT: Can't find evidence for this statement but I remember hearing it one time: Even network cameras aren't allowed to see the defensive signals on each play.

[bwgood77]

Damn, I despise the Patriots. Now of course I wonder if it impacted either of the games where the Pats knocked the Chargers out of the playoffs in the mid 2000s, particularly the one where the Chargers were the #1 seed.

[RRyder823]

When damn near every ex player that didn't play for NE calls them flat out cheaters it's hard to argue gamesmanship on any level. The Patriots are an organization of cheaters. It really is that simple. Hell I'm trying to think how a team COULD even have an offense worse then Spygate from a competitive balance viewpoint.

I got nothing short of handing out steroids like they're skittles....... Damnit Seattle

[RRyder823]

That's a great article. **** the Patriots.

My personal favorite is reading the comments from Pats fans defending the team

[emunney]

Now that I've read the whole article and understand that it's not based on a leak but on dozens of interviewed coaches, players, personnel guys, many of them named -- considering the league-wide anti-Goodell animus resulting from Spygate, according to the article, it's hard to understand how Goodell survived that. I feel like there's still more to this story out there somewhere.

[MickeyDavis]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/sports/roger-goodells-spheres-of-influence/1813/

[zmanishere11]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/sports/roger-goodells-spheres-of-influence/1813/

where's mark murphy at!?

[MickeyDavis]

Yeah even though he's not an owner he has an equal vote. But they just made him a footnote at the bottom.

[Profound23]

I start to wonder if Goodell makes sure certain calls go against the Pats this year. I can't see him allowing them to win the Superbowl again if possible.

[trwi7]

The Seahawks Why Your Team Sucks is great.

Your coach: Pete Carroll, who will happily second-guess the demolition of the Twin Towers while turning a blind eye to fixing this team’s two-minute drill. Pete Carroll will always be jussssst arrogant enough and jusssst dumb enough to keep you uneasy about your team’s chances. When you’re the Seahawks, you BETTER win your Super Bowl by five touchdowns, because you can’t afford to give this man the opportunity to **** you sideways before the final gun. WHAT IF THAT PLAY CALL WAS AN INSIDE JOB?!

It’s dumb luck that he landed with a team that could find a way to work around his transparent phoniness and pathetic need to be America’s Choirboy.

As it stands now, Russell Wilson is a great player, but also a soulless, inane, **** goody-goody who has all the emotional accessibility of a replicant. He is Darren Rovell in pads. He is football A-Rod. He is a latter-day Will Smith: the one that makes **** movies and is a poorly-closeted Scientologist. I can’t even imagine how many of his teammates make a wanking gesture any time this guy walks into the locker room and is like IT’S A GREAT DAY TO BE SPECIAL, YOU GUYS!

You guys can’t REALLY like this man. All of Wilson’s supposed “best” friends are probably stock models assigned to him by the marketing team for Abercrombie & Fitch. I wish I knew nothing about Russell Wilson outside of what he does on the field. The more I learn about him, the more intolerable he becomes. Never trust anyone who has done an Entourage cameo.

Also: he’s TOTALLY soaked it in Ciara. I know how bull displays of public chastity work.

As for these fans… You can dress up all you like and have all your stupid noise records, but the rest of us know the truth: You are a bunch of Johnny-Come-Lately dipshits who are contriving your own little new dopey traditions (that 12 jersey) to convince the world that your fanbase is right up there with the Packers and Steelers and other venerated teams. ALL LIES. Once Wilson gets murdered by his offensive line, you people will be back to chugging down watered down beer at the Clink, getting in knife fights, and being the NBA’s most reliable sucker city for leveraging other cities out of arena money. As storied franchises go, you are all amateurs:

Zach:

There are three kinds of Seahawks fans, and they all suck in their own way. There are, of course, the legions of bandwagon fans who come out of the woodwork any time any team is good. Those don’t set us apart. Then there are the die-hard fans who, despite living less than 10 or so miles from Seattle seem to have been imported from whatever backwoods Southern bog recently flooded: drinking the disgusting mass-production beer flogged at games and cycling between racial and gay slurs at a frankly astonishing rate, given how low in alcohol said beer actually is.

The group we have to ourselves, though, are the people like me. Folks who not-so-secretly long for the days when the Seahawks were either ****, or at least under the radar. The time before our players were on the covers of video games and getting talked about in tabloid magazines, when we could whine about the East Coast bias and how no one took us seriously. We are football hipsters, which is frankly the most pathetic thing I can think of, besides maybe the soccer hipsters, and trust me we have tons of those too.

http://deadspin.com/why-your-team-sucks-2015-seattle-seahawks-1728720266

[Ron Swanson]

The bit about Russell wouldn't be nearly as funny if it weren't so true. I'm glad everyone is just now wising up to how much of a pretentious ass hat he is.

[jakecronus8]

Someone on Bill Michaels show nailed it today. Someone else argued that maybe it affected 1% of the game and isn't a big deal.

So besides the obvious fact that if it didn't really matter then why would the Patriots continue to do it, 1% or even one play can determine a season. We might be super bowl champs if we had one more play vs Seattle.