Unjustified Suspension

It might be time to assume the NFL has no real judgment on disciplinary actions.

Everyone remembers the nonsense that occurred last season, where Ray Rice received an initial two-game suspension before the league went into damage control mode.  That a videotape of a vicious act was needed to result in a firm and fair punishment continues to sicken me.  What’s even worse is that the public backlash was what spawned the change in Rice’s case.

Apparently nothing has changed.  Yesterday, the NFL suspended Tom Brady for four games as part of the Deflategate process and the Wells Report, which claimed that it was “more probable than not” that Brady was “at least generally aware” of the Patriots deflating footballs intentionally.

I certainly can’t argue with that finding.  The text messages between Bryan McNally and John Jastremski both signify that each had spoken with Brady about the issue.  Granted that is their own words, but it seems to me only an unabashed biased source could read them and make any other conclusion.

But we should key on the “more probably than not” in the quotation above.  I realize we aren’t dealing with a courtroom evidentiary standard here, but is it right to suspend someone for a quarter of the season based on a phrase that does not signify proof?  Clearly, the NFL is making the case and has come to the conclusion that Brady not only knew but was also actively involved.  It’s not that I think that conclusion isn’t justified, but Ted Wells still can’t come up with any proof.  There is no video tape or anything like that, which makes me think four games is too extreme.

In short, I can see how the NFL connects the dots, but without ironclad proof, Brady should not get the same punishment that performance-enhancers get in today’s NFL.  If it were me, I give him two games and that’s it. 

The bigger injustice is for the Pats organization.  Ted Wells says in his report that he does not believe Bill Belichick or any other Pats coach had any knowledge of wrongdoing. 

Tell them, Johnny, what’s their prize?

A $1 million fine and two lost draft picks, one of which is a first rounder in 2016.  Maybe this is a NCAA-esque attitude, where anything going on within the team is the fault of the organization’s leaders, regardless of their knowledge or not.  That is a reasonable approach without deep investigative reports, but when the NFL’s own report says something different, any penalty on the organization as a whole makes little sense.  As Greg Schwab said in his post about this, it seems the NFL would like to use parts of the Wells Report when it’s convenient, but clearly not the whole report. 

In the end, I cannot shake the feeling that this punishment, so devoid of full proof and clearly hypocritical, is all about the public perception.  There are concrete examples of very minor penalties being handed out to teams that were manipulating game balls (see Mike Reiss for more).  One of those resulted in a warning, nothing like a $1 million fine.  The league clearly hasn’t cared all that much until now, so I have to wonder why.  Granted, it happened in the playoffs where any breaking of rules is magnified, but going from a warning to a $1 million fine in one season is a massive shift that is not at all in keeping with the NFL’s prior work on the issue of ball manipulation.

Pats fans should feel fine about the short-term results.  Brady will likely appeal and get this whittled down (if the arbiter is truly independent), and the team will remain strong as it always has.  But longer-term, the questions about Brady will remain in the eyes of the average fan, most of whom don’t like New England.  They will hang the suspension for cheating on him forever, and while I can’t argue the presence of the suspension, the penalties in this case aren’t justified.