NFL 2018 Season Thread

[-Jrabbit]

Yeah, J'ville is generally a safe bet for sucking. Oakland may be somewhat better. Houston just lost Arian Foster and has no QB. Cleveland looks shaky. Buffalo has Buddy Ryan's D but no QB. I also think there's a high probability of suckitude in Washington DC.

Can the Bears be that bad? Sure. Running a new 3-4 defense with personnel ill-suited to it could be rocky. But even without Brandon Marshall, they have a lot of weapons on offense.

[-Jrabbit]

Hey, the Brady case is gettin' real...

Judge Berman orders NFL-NFLPA to not file documents under seal
Posted by Mike Florio on August 4, 2015, 4:04 PM EDT

Full transparency is coming to the Tom Brady appeal process.

Judge Richard M. Berman, who strongly hinted on Friday that he won’t be inclined to allow the NFL and NFLPA to keep the transcript of the 10-hour Tom Brady appeal hearing secret, has ordered the parties to not submit materials under seal, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

It means that the transcript of the Brady appeal hearing will soon be made public.

The NFLPA previously attached the transcript as an exhibit to the filing made under seal in federal court in Minnesota. With that case transferred back to New York, the union soon will be re-filing its initial submission, with the transcript as an exhibit.

And the transcript at that point will be a matter of public record. Which means that it’ll be time to brew some coffee and put on the cheaters, because anyone paid to comment on this case will be compelled to read every word of every page of the transcript.

And here it is:

(link to full Brady appeal transcript -- online PDF)

Let this be decided on the record. I'm about 30 pages in.

[rah]

I made it considerably farther and I've decided to give it up.

For me, in summary.
Brady not going to admit **** and they really have no evidence to the contrary.
The Commish, can do whatever he wants regardless.

If I was the judge, I'd slap the commish silly and tell him to lighten up and reduce it to a simple fine or cut it back to one game.

Now granted I didn't finish the entire thing. It kind of kept just repeating itself.

[-Jrabbit]

Yeah, a tough read. Most testimony transcripts are, since it's all about leading questions, rehearsed answers, and getting witnesses to make specific statements.

No one is saying Goodell can't legally act as he has; it's within scope of the (monumentally stupid) CBA appeals process. But this does make it clear he is doing so without any hard evidence, and ignoring the precedent of all other cases. No player has ever been suspended for an equipment violation of any kind.

BTW, the NFL made significant changes in its procedures for documented measurement of gameball PSI, revealing over the weekend after the appeal ruling. And it really hurts (the logic of) their case against Brady:

The NFL has quietly added another layer of absurdity to the DeflateGate ordeal, which is now lumbering into its seventh month of existence with no clear endpoint established. In one move, the NFL managed to both overreact to the controversy and further undermine its shaky case against New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. After a half-year of missteps, in the midst of an endless charade, the league found one more way to mangle the case.

Over the weekend, former NFL head of officials Mike Pereira, now a Fox Sports analyst, revealed that the NFL had informed referees of changes pertaining to the measurement and recording of air pressure of game-day footballs. There will be increased testing, oversight and security surrounding the balls. At random games, officials will measure the PSI of 24 footballs at halftime. Two officials, instead of only the referee, will measure and record the inflation of footballs before the game.

The NFL needed to address the way footballs are handled on game day. As the details in the Wells Report showed, the system of how footballs make it on to the playing field was slipshod and vulnerable to teams that wanted to flout the rules to gain an advantage. The old guidelines were either incomplete or incoherent.

With the changes, though, the NFL further damaged its case that Brady deserved a four-game suspension for a general awareness that the Patriots were illegally manipulating game balls. The NFL implicitly admitted its old guidelines for handling footballs were not applied in a consistent or meaningful way. That means the NFL implicitly admitted it suspended Brady a quarter of a season for violating rules that were so incomplete or so poorly enforced they had to be fundamentally changed. Even if Brady broke a rule, the NFL never showed it cared enough about ball inflation levels that it would merit a long suspension.

The NFL already has a stiff legal battle on its hands in the event Commissioner Roger Goodell upholds any part of the suspension the league levied against Brady. The NFLPA believes it has a strong case that Goodell is acting as a biased arbiter in the appeal process, and that the league violated its own standards in the way it punished Brady.

The new rule changes only further damage the NFL’s public stance and make the harshness of the original punishment look silly. The league will have to explain why it felt strongly enough about air pressure to suspend Brady, but not so strongly about it that it bothered to make or regularly enforce strict guidelines before this incident. It doesn’t make any sense, except in the context of how the NFL has operated under Goodell, just guessing and making it up as it goes along.

Washington Post, July 27.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2015/07/27/nfls-post-deflategate-rule-changes-undermine-leagues-punishment-of-tom-brady/

[H Tower]

If I was the judge, I'd slap the commish silly and tell him to lighten up and reduce it to a simple fine or cut it back to one game.

That's a reasonable position, except for one thing. Overruling an arbitrator's decision opens up all kind of problems. Chief among them is basically making all arbitrations merely one more step before going to court, even when arbitration is supposed to be a legally binding alternative to the judicial system. Based upon what I've read, it takes gross misconduct by the arbitrator to get a decision overturned by the courts.

I think the NFLPA is learning a valuable lesson here, make sure that when you agree to arbitration, you don't let the other party be the arbitrator. It's ridiculous the way this is setup.

[-Jrabbit]

No way Bears are last.
What about Oakland? Jacksonville? I could come up with others easily.

Here's a fresh candidate. It would be hard to imagine any team falling so far, so fast, but...

The 49ers' Offseason From Hell continues. They've released OLB Aldon Smith, and lost ILB Chris Borland, DE Justin Smith, RB Frank Gore, coach Jim Harbaugh, both coordinators and most of the coaching staff, ILB Patrick Willis, LG Mike Iupati, CBs Perrish Cox and Chris Culliver, WRs Michael Crabtree and Stevie Johnson, OLB Dan Skuta, and RT Anthony Davis.

[SlowwHand]

Definitely a contender.

[Demonbinder]

Las Vegas has Bears at 5-7 wins which sounds about right.

[rah]

Well the preseason has officially started.

And if you're listening to those in Buffalo, a Bears 5-11 season should include them in the Quarterback purgatory group.

[pchang]

Geno Smith out with a broken jaw. He was decked by a reserve linebacker. I wonder who paid the linebacker?

[Zopperoni]

Who cares? Geno Smith sucks. Only now through a straw.

[SlowwHand]

Jason Witten played with a broken jaw.

[-Jrabbit]

The QB needs to talk -- loudly. Every play.

But yeah, Witten is one tough hombre.

[rah]

Who cares? Geno Smith sucks. Only now through a straw.

He may suck, but it sounds like they're looking at rex grossman. He's so much better

[Zopperoni]

I thought this tweet by the legendary Jared Lorenzen was brilliant:

Umm @nyjets just saying I already look great in green. #ComingbacktoNYC #ThrowboyTees pic.twitter.com/upoPxJx3NU

— jared lorenzen (@JaredLorenzen22) August 11, 2015