The feeling here is that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft did the right thing in deciding not to fight the excessive punishment that the NFL saw fit to hand his franchise for the issues surrounding the inflation of footballs. A $1 million fine, a first round pick in 2016, and a fourth round pick in 2017 are a ridiculous price to pay for possibly violating an 80-year old rule that few even knew existed before January. It's a price that is made even more ridiculous in light of the 4-month long, NFL-sponsored investigation by gumshoe Ted Wells that exonerated the Patriots of any wrongdoing. Why was the Kraft's team hit so hard if they were exonerated? Excellent question. Who knows? Some say that it was because of past offenses. That just sounds like someone grasping for a reason when they have no reason. Most say that it was because the team didn't cooperate with the investigation. They say that the team didn't allow follow-up investigations with the knuckleheads that may or may not have deflated the footballs. One would think that with a fine so severe that the team didn't cooperate at all. They did. If the Wells investigation was more organized and better run those follow-up interviews that the Patriots refused wouldn't have even been necessary. The greatest wrong among all of the wrongs surrounding this nonsense was that Wells was paid at least $5 million for his investigation. He sounded pretty proud of himself for that. He shouldn't be. He did more harm than good with his work. The incompetence of the NFL under Goodell has been stunning. The Patriots were hit so hard simply because Goodell could.
Robert Kraft was right to walk away from this mess for the reasons that he stated. This asinine discussion has gone on far too long. The media and the NFL made more of this football inflation issue than it ever deserved. Even if Wells could prove that the Patriots tampered with the footballs it's a minor violation. If it provided a competitive advantage there would have been more than a handful of people that even knew that the rule existed. It's been around for a while and it's probably fairly likely that every single NFL game ever played has used a football that was under-inflated. Especially in cold-weather games. If the league really cared about the rule they would have checked every football before it ever passed through a center's legs. I actually question the league's intentions in all of this far more than the Patriots' intentions in what they may or may not have done. The league's actions are the greater threat to the "integrity of the game." The NFL had the result that they wanted and worked backward to make things fit that result as best they could. That's why the whole thing was a disaster from the pre-game clown show of the AFC Championship game to the issuing of excessive punishments. Kraft accepted those excessive punishments because it all needed to end now. During his six-minute address at the Owner's Meetings in San Francisco, Kraft stated that he might have come to a different decision a week ago. He'd cooled over the past few days. He still wasn't happy about any of it but putting an end to the nonsense now was better than talking about it even a single day more. I agree but I don't have to come up with $1 million and forfeit valuable draft picks. It's definitely better for the NFL if this nonsense ends now. So Kraft is taking one in the jibblies for the "greater good."
Cheers Mr. Kraft.
No comments:
Post a Comment