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There's also a risk/reward factor there for Brady. Certainly risky to turn over your phone records or email records to anybody in this day and age.

Sends a horrible, horrible, horrible message though, particularly to the public that already perceives the NFL in a negative light. All you're really saying in that instance is that deflating footballs and lying about it is at least equal to knocking your wife out cold. And if you wanted to argue it based on the INITIAL response from the league, deflating footballs and lying about it is 8 times as harsh as knocking your wife out cold. Again, public perception might not be relevant to you or even me, but it matters very, very, very much to the NFL. A 12 game suspension for lying, frankly regardless of what you're lying about, will come off to just about everybody as excessive, baseless, and frankly reckless. There's no shortage of players who got popped for PED usage that likely lied about it. Even after they're caught, they deny that they did anything wrong, and occasionally attack the methods by which the sample was collected. I can't recall anytime in the NFL where they issue a harsher punishment from somebody denying it, which is the exact same as lying in that instance. I have no doubt that they lying and lack of cooperation will factor into the punishment, but seems borderline ridiculous to make the that aspect of the punishment 3 times as harsh as the actual act itself. Seems highly counter-productive.

Even if that were true, the Jets game scenario only basically shows that Brady did NOT cheat during that game. If he's complaining about the pressure of the footballs, that likely means that they weren't deflated to the level he wanted, meaning that they were legally inflated. So in that instance, he wouldn't have even violated any rules.

Potentially. We know it doesn't benefit the Patriots defense, because they aren't even touching the footballs that Brady was playing with. While an individual player taking PEDs MAY only benefit him, if he plays better, the overall production of the team increases. If Tom Brady is taking steroids that allows him to be stronger, and therefore throw the ball harder or farther, the entire offense would benefit from that in theory, particularly if they are aware of it.

In theory, that could work. The problem is... we really only know for certain that Brady used deflated footballs for a single half and nothing more. We can guess and play the "well clearly its not the first time he's done it card", but that's all it will ever be... guessing. The only other thing we do know is that for the next 6 quarters after that, he used legal footballs. So again, if we compare the two, he was significantly better with legal footballs.

And that may be true. But if its a fundamental "rules violation" like you said, and I tend to agree that it is, then we already have at least a reasonable precedence for punishment. We know that the NFL establishes a PED policy, with is a violation of rules that affects on-field performance (same as Deflategate). We know that policy basically dictates a four game suspension for a player on a first offense, which is what Brady qualifies under. PED use actually, in my opinion, fits this mold rather well. Its a willful violation of the rules in order to gain a competitive advantage, and from the NFL's perspective, they can't possibly determine how it affects on field play... only that it probably does. Its up to the NFL to determine if Deflategate rises to that level or not. There's no doubt the NFL is in a tough spot. All of this talk of year-long suspensions would seem to be counter-productive to the NFL, mostly because it would create backlash from the public in a greater fashion that the entire incident ever did. You and I might not care about public backlash, but the NFL does.

The reason people bring up Rodgers is to sort of dismiss this notion that having deflated footballs is 100% better for QBs. The point is that not every QB prefers footballs the same way, so deflated footballs for Brady would be a good thing apparently, and for Rodgers it would be a bad thing. Its purely a matter of preference. I don't really lump Spygate in with this, because its a completely separate incident in my opinion, involving completely separate people. Brady had nothing to do with Spygate as far as I know, nor does Belichick have anything to do with this. No doubt the lying and lack of cooperation will play into the punishment.

So would I. The problem is... there's a similar list of past players who I respect just as much who have laughed this off, claimed its a common occurrence in the league, and even said it may have an adverse effect. We know Aaron Rodgers doesn't like to throw low-deflated footballs and prefer his to be much harder. That's sort of the problem with the whole argument... players are different. Some players like handling deflated footballs, and others like handling much more inflated footballs. Couple that with one of the only facts we actually do know, which is that Brady seemed to do quite a bit better with properly inflated footballs than he did at least for the half where he used illegal footballs, and you can see why simply taking a couple people's word for it might not be the best option. In the end, that's what makes the topic so difficult to discuss, because determining actual impact is borderline impossible. Some might say the actual impact is irrelevant, though I'd suggest that the NFL almost universally bases its decisions on punishment on actual impact rather than things like what "might have been" or the lame "cheating is cheating" argument, which would make all punishments identical with no scaling. The reason I don't get overly upset about it is mostly because I watched Brady play 6 quarters of football with legal footballs, and he looked pretty damn good doing it, which confirms what we all already knew... he's pretty good.

Highly debatable though, because there's several different viewpoints: 1. There's really no possible way to actually quantify, qualify, or even gauge what affect using deflated footballs had on the game. Even the NFL is guessing in that regards. 2. From the overall NFL product perspective, Rice/Peterson's situations are exponentially worse, because they affect the bottom line/perception of the league at an exponentially larger scale. As far as I know, I don't hear of any sponsors, activist groups, etc. who actually have influence on the NFL and their bottom line calling for harsh punishment for Brady and the Pats, because frankly, they don't care. Its a standard in-house punishment as far as they're concerned, much like the league would punish a player for PED use or any other football-related suspensions that would occur. Outside parties, namely sponsors/advertisers, who have the ability to alter the league's financial position in a big way, generally don't care about football-related incidents. They care about incidents that affects their consumers, and incidents occurring off the field (such as domestic violence) are far more important to them. And because of that, they are and should be more important to the NFL. I have no doubt that the NFL is going to be much more cautious and much more thorough in determining the punishment, and I have no doubt they will give consideration to their perception of suspending Brady for an equal or perceived equal amount of time as Ray Rice. That doesn't exactly send a message that anybody is going to respect.

You completely dodged and missed the entire point. You said, specifically, that you hold the Patriots accountable for Brady deflating some footballs, and that you blame the organization for not instilling the values of integrity and fair play in him. Those are YOUR words, not mine. Under that scenario, how do you NOT hold the Ravens equally accountable for Ray Rice's transgressions? If you're expectation is that the Patriots organization is supposed to act in the same role as a parent does, and instill values in ADULTS, then why aren't the Ravens or any other organization held to that very same standard? You don't get to be selective when you hold organizations accountable, if your belief is that the Patriots had some sort of responsibility to educate their players on things that the players should have (and probably did but just ignored) learned a decade earlier, then you have to apply that across the entire board, otherwise it comes off as hypocritical and homerish. I strongly suggest you re-read your entire post that I replied to, and take a second to think about what you really said. Anybody that reads what you said is going to take from it the following conclusion... "I blame the Patriots for not teaching Brady about integrity". Stop and think about how ludicrous that conclusion is.

What you just described is the job description of Father, not a professional sports franchise. Teaching integrity and fair play is something that would fall under the responsibility of a parent teaching a group of 10 year old players playing football for the first time. These are adults. They were adults when they entered the league, and they'll be adults when they leave. If they haven't learned that things like integrity or fair play are important by the age of 21, chances are they'll never learn it. They're big boys.. if they want to cheat, they're going to cheat, values or no values. Instilling values is all great and cute and everything, but there are millions of Americans who on a daily basis violate values that have been instilled in them, and its rarely the fault of the person who did or didn't instill them in them. Adults make their own decisions, and they frequently make those decisions knowing fully well what the consequences are. By that logic, shouldn't we hold the Ravens directly responsible for failing to teach Ray Rice that knocking out your wife is a bad thing? Shouldn't we hold the Ravens directly responsible for failing to teach Haloti Ngata that he shouldn't use Adderall? Very, very, very slippery slope you're going down by blaming a sports franchise for not teaching values to adults. There are zero teams in this league who have done that effectively if that's the case.

But you yourself just admitted that there is "no certain measurement for the quantity/quality of information". So if that's the case, how are you certain then that him not turning over his cellphone automatically means that he isn't in compliance by NFL standards? You couldn't possibly come to that conclusion... unless you knew what that measurement is. When the league determines that a person is not cooperating, its 100% based on some sort of examples or descriptions of times where that player did not. They don't just come out and say "well he didn't cooperate" without having a basis for that statement. Based on the what the report said, we know that Brady failed to comply with meeting with the NFL on more than one occasion as the NFL requested (same thing applies for his "co-conspirators"), and that he made contradictory statements after he publicly denied knowledge of certain aspects that the investigators found he at least should have knowledge of. As I stated earlier, they already had Brady's text messages anyway, because the other parties involved provided them. In the statement you quoted by Florio, he didn't mentioned any of the things you said he did. You posted that specifically to show how Florio basically thinks that the NFL gets what it wants all the time, as in when they want a piece of evidence or what somebody to provide that for them, they get it. I, logically, stated that this was false, and that Florio probably knows that its false. The NFLPA exists to be the opposite side of that equation in certain cases, as well as the fact that we've already seen precedence of the NFL being unable to obtain evidence that they desire from people.

It doesn't matter if its Flacco specifically. I said on a weekly basis, and likely from this very organization, you will find players and/or coaches that get as "in their face" as Brady has gotten with refs, and to my recollection, zero of them have been thrown out of a game. Many have been fined/penalized, but then again, so has Brady. That's the point. If this idea is to establish that Brady gets "preferential treatment" based on the idea that he and only he can get in a refs face and scream at them, then its simply false, because many players have done the same thing and faced the same fate Brady did. This notion that Brady gets preferential treatment is largely unfounded. The only real argument is based on the rules established to prevent players from diving at a QBs lower body, which I agree Brady was a catalyst for, although I also don't blame the league, since its incredibly bad for business to have your star QBs out for the season with leg injuries caused by reckless players who aren't nearly as relevant. Its unavoidable in the sport naturally, but it can be deterred, which ironically is what we are talking about now. There's people that literally think that Brady got preferential treatment from the "tuck rule", yet it had literally nothing to do with him, the rule was established long before that play made it famous, and Brady was arguably the biggest catalyst that caused the rule to be removed. He whines on the field, he complains on the field, he begs for calls. I get it, and I don't like it either. But this idea he gets every call he wants all the time is laughable and baseless.

1. The recipient of the text messages from the GM was, in fact, a coach. Therefore, by definition, he was involved in cheating. 2. Actually, it makes no difference at all, and you already knew that. You know this, because on a weekly basis, you see players other than Tom Brady screaming at refs from an extremely close distance. And yet, you'd likely have to do quite a bit of searching to provide even ONE name of a player who's been tossed from a game for screaming at refs, unless they made contact with them. The next time the Ravens play a game (probably even a preseason game), I'll be more than happy to point out multiple times where a player on the field is screaming at a referee from a very close distance, and 0 of them will be ejected from the game. Same thing applies to coaches. But again, you already knew this.

There is a video that can be found easily on the internet that shows a QB who wears the #5 jersey for the Ravens yelling and screaming at referees during a professional football game. He was NOT ejected from the game.

Nope, there isn't. But then again, there really isn't for the Patriots either, because that implies that you somehow blame the Patriots as an organization for Tom Brady deflating footballs. If the NFL is basing a large amount of its decision and punishment on the Wells Report, then don't expect much, if any, punishment for the organizatin as a whole, because the Wells report largely exonerates those parties. Specifically, parties like Belichick and Kraft (the two "big dogs" within the organization) come out of the report basically scott free. Again, the only real organizational failure I see is Spygate. I don't even understand why people think this incident is an organizational failure. Botching the Ray Rice investigation and punishment... that's an organizational failure. What the Saints did... organizational failure. If this is viewed as an organizational failure, then I'd have to view Haloti Ngata getting busted for Adderall as an organizational failure.

That's all well and good, but I doubt not providing the NFL with private information (such as text messages and emails) is sufficient enough to classify him as "not cooperating". There were numerous other instances that the report focuses on where the investigator felt Brady didn't cooperate, which we already knew about. And like most cases, Mike Florio is wrong (shocking there). Mike Florio knows there's a gigantic wall in between the player and the NFL that is called the NFL Players Association. We've seen dozens of cases where the NFL issues a punishment and it is either reduced or eliminated all together via the NFLPA. I believe, by definition, that's the exact opposite of the NFL "getting what it wants". Heck, if the NFL got what it wanted, Adrian Peterson would have never been reinstated. Yet, he is. If I were Brady, and I were actually presented with the option of turning over personal items that I don't want others to see, or face punishment from not doing so, I'd choose the punishment. There's arguably far less risk involved in that.

Like who? Cleveland Browns cheated last season... how many of their players/coaches were suspended. Atlanta Falcons cheated last season (and multiple seasons before that)... how many of their players/coaches were suspended. There's the Saints, and there's basically nobody else in quite a few years. We've got two examples in the last twelve months of organizations who were found to have cheated. One had their GM suspended for 4 games (I'm not even sure what this accomplishes quite frankly) and was fined. They didn't even suspend the GM during the crucial times of the year, such as draft and FA. If anybody suspended Ozzie Newsome for the entire month of September... would anybody here even care? Might be the single most irrelevant time of the year for his position in the organization. The other was fined and forfeited a 5th round draft pick in the 2016 draft (not even the current year draft). And that was for repeated instances.

The problem I have with this is that I think too many people are taking the Deflategate case and blaming it on the Patriots organization. Frankly, I've seen zero evidence (and apparently, neither did the report) that indicates that's the case. Its certainly ludicrous to think that Robert Kraft has even vague knowledge of this, and frankly, I don't understand why Belichick would care about this either. To me, this is a pretty simple case of a QB working with his team of equipment men to obtain a competitive advantage. I can't make the leap from Spygate to now assuming that the culture of the organization is shattered because Brady wanted to deflate some footballs. I think they are two completely separate incidents, perpretated by two completely separate people/group of people. I've seen this growing trend in society where the primary goal of any sort of scandal is to burn at the stake anybody who knew, could have known, should have known, or might have known but we don't really know so we will burn them too. Never really made much sense to me. How about we actually hold the people who are responsible for the actual infraction that we are talking about accountable. I don't know how anybody could even perceive that Kraft or probably even Belichick are responsible for Brady wanting his footballs deflated. So all we are really doing by punishing Kraft or Belichick, is just punishing them again for Spygate. That's all it really is. Frankly, I hold the HC/owner of a franchise as responsible for this incident as I hold a franchise HC/owner for their players using PEDs, which as you know, never happens. Either way, at some point society has to shift towards actually punishing people that commit infractions, vs attempting to punish every person who may have known that person.

1. No, actually, that's NOT what the report establishes. I read the report, and at no point in time did I even get a vague perception that the point of it was to establish a long-pattern of rules violations. If that's what you think the report intended to do, then the report failed and failed miserably in doing so. It was done to provide a timeline and basis for the evidence regarding that incident, and any other incidents that were brought to their attention, for much they essentially concluded were none. 2. You are right, they do go harsher on people who don't cooperate and lie. But they also have zero history of going harsher on people because they "might have" done this many times before. They aren't nearly that reckless.

From a national perspective, I think Ray is significantly more of an "iconic figure" than Ed Reed was. Certainly in Baltimore Reed would qualify as such, but Ray had much more of national intrigue I believe, which probably has influence over whether he gets a statue. I personally was never a fan of the statue concept to begin with, because it only leads to debates like this. The Ring of Honor is designed for just this situation, and Reed will be going into that this year.

So basically, one game against the Colts, since that's all they know about. Also, they wouldn't even play the Ravens until at least the playoffs, so if the scheduling had fallen a different way, he could be looking at a zero game suspension.

LOL, uh no. You are way, way, way, way, way, way off. 1. Tom Brady's employer never once asked for his cellphone or his email. A third party, who has zero power or authority over Brady in any way shape or form, asked for it. He declined. He has every right on the planet to decline. Frankly, even if he has nothing to hide, he gains precisely ZERO by turning it over to them. 2. In his business, he also has something called a Union. So in the event his employer requests that he does something that he questions the legality of, he can speak with his Union, who are paid absurd amounts of money to protect his interests. So in reality, without due process (via Union appeals, lawsuits, etc.), he CAN'T be fired in that instance. He may ultimately get to that point, but after several, several months of litigation. AND, that's ignoring the fact that no legal system on the planet would rule in the NFL's favor in that instance. This is the danger the public gets into when they start comparing their place of employment to the NFL. Two vastly different worlds. I actually feel sorry for people who willfully just do whatever they're told all the time without even a vague understanding of what the purpose of it is. And the most amusing part to me... they didn't even need his phone. They already had his texts anyway.

I don't even know what message it sends. All it would do is make sure the Patriots complied with rules for whatever short duration the independent party were there. They are already going to comply with rules in the interim after this fake scandal anyway, so again, not sure what the independent party would accomplish. At best, they'd likely find some extremely minor equipment or uniform violations, for which they would fine the Patriots, which means nothing to the public. Its no different than the NFL instituting a mandatory domestic violence "seminar" for NFL personnel. That's for show. That's so that they can go to the public and say "hey look, we are trying". The seminar accomplishes less than nothing. If you need to have a seminar to tell people that beating other human beings is wrong, then the problem is above anything the NFL can fix anyway (which is exactly true). That's about how relevant bringing in an independent party to watch the Patriots would do. It makes the public feel like they are "trying", but other than that, it accomplishes nothing. I don't even know what they need to clean up to be honest. Its the first time any of us are aware of this even remotely being perceived as a problem, and something tells me that catching one team deflating some footballs doesn't quite meet the "epidemic" standard. And no, Spygate doesn't meet the epidemic standard either. Even if you wanted to argue that its some sort of fake epidemic, its not even isolated to the Patriots. There's two other teams that have cheated this offseason alone... why shouldn't they have independent parties in their lockerrom as well? Because the Patriots got caught doing something else like a decade ago? I don't buy it, nor do I think its even a remote possibility as the "punishment" is levied.

And its probably the very thing that would elevate it from a mere "slap on the wrist" to a suspension. Never really understood the publics argument though that "if you have nothing to hide just turn your cellphone over". I mean at the end of the day, its really no different than a stranger just asking to look through your phone and email. Regardless of what I have on either, you're not just going to look through my stuff just because you want to. You want to get a subpoena of some sort, then we can talk. But the "well he shouldn't have anything to hide" argument doesn't make any sense to me.