Colin Kaepernick As Failed State

The protest movement launched by Colin Kaepernick is a metaphor for failed states - and also is not a “freedom of speech issue since political speech is illegal in any workplace.

Anthem Protest Nonsense Mars Week Three And Leads To Four

Buffalo's upset of the surging Broncos was one upset from Week Three that cast looking ahead to Week Four in a different light


The third week of the 2017 season was marred by the petulance of NFL players and the larger league when Donald Trump attacked anthem protests.  Players escalated their anthem protest and were loudly booed for it, while Roger Goodell enabled them via a stupid message of support that managed to get everything wrong - again.

Army - and Afgahnistan - vet Alejandro Villanueva showed up his Pittsburgh Steelers teammates and coach by standing for the Anthem; he was sold out by being forced to apologize for it later, while Ben Roethlisberger reportedly also opposed sitting for the Anthem


And the anthem protest fiasco is exposing the complete lack of credibility of rationalization for it - for the players are not courageous or standing for social justice, they are simply being petulant children; when they try to justify their stand, such as Duron Harmon's claim that "we're standing for those who have no voice," they merely prove how foolish they are - there is no "those who have no voice, and it never occurs to them that "those who have no voice" may not have earned a voice.    "Nor do the protesting players come across as informed......but as mostly unable to explain to their fans precisely why and how they are mistreated or why America is a flawed society...." Of course they can't because their premise is factually untrue - especially given how these players worked and worked to reach this level, thus again validating the meritocracy of football - and fans (and Trump) know it - they also know the First Amendment does NOT give them the right to protest.   So players come across not as courageous but as gutless.

And also grossly enabled - that they took umbrage at Trump's comments shows no one is challenging them to justify their stand - least of all coaches or team owners who foolishly supported their players instead of demanding they offer some credible information.   Indeed the players' outrage smacked of self-entitlement - that they feel the rules of freedom of speech (it's a two-way street) don't apply to them.   Thomas Sowell calls is differential exemption, and it's the classic swerve of Intellectuals - "I the NFL player have the right to protest the anthem and you do not have the right to call me out for it."


Such gutlessness is enabled by media (and typical of its approach to social issues) but fan booing will not go away. All of it mars enjoyment of a thrilling game whose third week was genuinely spectacular. We allude to Week Three as we make our picks for Week Four -

The ethic of celebrating touchdowns got exposed for the farce it is in the Steelers-Bears game as John Fox may finally be getting things turned around there


Bears over Packers  -  This is a tricky pick given Aaron Rodgers did the rarest of things - for only the fifth time in his career he led a comeback from down two or more scores in beating a surprisingly strong Bengals squad.   The Bears, though, we think are not the same old Bears despite being in the bottom third in scoring and points allowed so far.    The Packers are midpack on both sides of the ball and blew a 17-point lead last time they met the Bears, so we can expect a tight one here, especially after the last Thursday Night game played in the league.


Saints over Dolphins in London -  The Saints got on the board by hammering the Panthers and they fly to London to face a Dolphins team embarrassed by the NY Jets.   The Dolphins are sixth in fewest points allowed but they face a Saints offense eleventh in scoring while Jay Cutler has become the Jay Cutler we all knew in scoring just 25 points in two games.    Except more of the same here.

Patriots over Panthers - It's a rematch of 2013's controversial Monday Night affair; the difference here is Tom Brady is even better than he was then and Cam Newton is not.    The big semi-shocker is the Panthers are second in fewest points allowed taking on the second-highest scoring offense in the league.    This is a battle of strength against strength and also weakness - the Panthers have scored just 45 points, 29th in the league - against weakness - the Patriots have gagged up 95 points, dead last in the league.   While the Panthers were getting smacked around Tom Brady was leading the 51st comeback of his career as he is now integrating more people into the passing game, notably Brandin Cooks after a slow start and unheralded Jacob Hollister.  While Hollister's stats aren't close to gaudy (and in the process giving his defense something to work with and thus improve), he is beginning to establish something with the other tight end Dwayne Allen struggling badly to fit in the offense.   The run game meanwhile was in Witness Protection against Houston - who played like the Oilers of old - and is only at 3.5 yards per carry. 

The question turned out to be - who would score more lustily, Peter Hermann and Mariska Hargitay with each other or the Jaguars against the Ravens?   If you took a tie and the points in this bet, you won


Jaguars over NY Jets -  Tom Coughlin will never have to buy groceries again in Jacksonville, for he is authoring a genuine turnaround for the Jaguars - presently fourth on both sides of the ball.   Blake Bortles looked like Mark Brunell at 64% completion and four touchdowns, reminiscent of Jacksonville's ten-game winning streak over the Ravens in the Jaguars' first five seasons in the league.   Joe Flacco meanwhile looks more and more like a fading quarterback at three touchdowns and four INTs all season, and it makes the Ravens' fifth-ranked defense (and 2-1 record) look illusory.   The Jags march into Coughlin's old house in The Meadowlands as the Jets spoiled Suck For Sam by hammering the Dolphins.    We still don't think the Jets are any good and have too much incentive to try to get Sam Darnold for 2018.

One of the faces of Anthem protest is the Seahawks and phony victim Michael Bennett - despite four touchdowns by Russell Wilson the Seahawks got put down by the Titans


Texans over Titans -  This game may become a shootout of the 38-35 model as the first of the semi-annual Houston Oilers Bowls hits The Stadium Next To The Astrodome.   The Titans come in off 469 rushing yards - a whopping 156 per game at 5.1 YPC - so far and after a bit of a slow start Marcus Mariota has reached 60% completion and had a better completion percentage (20 of 32 for 225) than Wilson (29 of 49, but he hit 373 yards and edged Mariota in passer rating 110.3 to Mariota's 104.3).  They get a Texans defense that showed its toughness in Foxboro but which is 26th in points allowed.   The Texans offense got going with Deshaun Watson's breakout game and he faces Tennessee's defense ranked 21st in points.   So expect fireworks.


Ravens over Steelers -  Both teams come in off bitter losses and with mediocre or worse offenses between Baltimore's 23rd in scoring to Pittsburgh's sixteenth.   Neither run defense is all that good - both in the 4.3 YPC allowed category.  The edge may be in turnover differential (plus-four for the Ravens to plus-one for the Steelers) but then the flaw there is the Ravens have more turnovers involved (six given up to ten snatched) than the Steelers. 



Bengals over Browns - The Bengals at least finally started scoring after changing offensive coordinators and they get an annual patsy to practice against, but the Browns have shown some genuine fight.

Call it heartbreak, call it karma for a team 7-52 against quality foes in the Matthew Stafford era, but the Lions won't get over the Falcons game for awhile and look to take it out on the Vikings


Lions over Vikings - Will Bradford or won't Bradford?  Sam Bradford had to sit out the last two games so we think Case Keenum will start here.   The Lions have won the last two meetings in this rivalry and are seventh in points to 12th for the Vikings. 

The early candidate for Game Of The Year was the Rams' 41-39 thriller of an escape at the 49ers; it illustrated these aren't the Same Old Rams


Rams over Cowboys -   The Cowboys got a rude awakening in getting hammered by the Broncos and responded with a tough win over the Cardinals highlighted by an explosive game by receiver Brice Butler.   The Cowboys now host a Rams team leading the league in scoring but 27th in points allowed.   The revelation is Jared Goff, at 70% completion and five touchdowns to one pick.  The Cowboys' dependence on Zeke Elliott is now hurting them, so they need to get more out of the passing game.   This game like others promises a lot more offense.

Brice Butler may be emerging as a go-to receiver for the Cowboys


Falcons over Bills - Buffalo's big win over the Broncos makes this a tougher matchup than it might have looked earlier this season, especially with the Bills leading the league in fewest points allowed (just twelve per game so far).   Offensively the Bills haven't lit it up while the Falcons are 16th in points allowed and fifth in scoring, with no sign of a Superbowl hangover.

The Eagles won a brass-knuckle affair against the NY Giants and now get a Chargers team that we're not sure won't play in San Diego by December


Eagles over Chargers -  What you need to know - the league looks to shift the Chargers back to San Diego.   Expect this to happen - even this year, though unlikely for so short a timetable - as the 0-3 Chargers host an Eagles team beginning to build momentum.


49ers over Cardinals -   Something amazing happened - the 49ers despite losing had a coming-out party in the game against the Rams.   Kyle Shanahan and Brian Hoyer travel to Arizona with the Cardinals looking schizophrenic with a big loss to the Lions followed by the grinder of a win over the Colts followed by a tough loss to the Cowboys. 



Buccaneers over NY Giants -  The Giants showed fight in the loss to the Eagles and go to a Bucs team that got punched out by Case Keenum.   Despite that embarrassment the Bucs are in the top-15 on both sides of the ball.  Jameis Winston's three picks against the Vikes, though, is something that needs to be cleaned up. 


Raiders over Broncos - The wild and wooly AFC West just got wilder with both teams coming off ugly losses, the Broncos vaunted defense perhaps now exposed as somewhat illusory despite still being 15th in points allowed, and the Raiders now no longer the juggernaut advertised entering the season.   Trevor Siemian's explosion against the Cowboys revealed that kind of potential, but as was the case last season the issue becomes sustaining it. 

Seahawks over Colts -   The Seahawks haven't shown much if any weakness at home as they host a Colts team that finally broke through, albeit against a Browns squad that staged a tough comeback.   With the Colts hinting Andrew Luck will begin practicing before this game there's clearly desperation to get him back on the field.   The Seahawks meanwhile come home having finally established some offensive power, so Russell Wilson should have the edge here.


Chiefs over Redskins -   Andy Reid opened his Chiefs career by sweeping the NFC East and he looks to do it again.  The Redskins come in, though, with momentum and confidence after upending the Raiders; even with that Reid has owned the NFC East for a long time.  


The league needs some growing up to do as it hits Week Four.

Debate Won By Patriots In Superbowl LI

The debate has now been won by the New England Patriots as their comeback win in Superbowl LI - the largest in the game's history, the third-largest comeback win in a playoff game in NFL history - cemented Tom Brady as the greatest quarterback ever and the Patriots as the greatest team of all time.
 

Of course greatest team of all time will still come as a shock to the oldtimers who remember the reign of error that was Billy Sullivan, the team's founder.


There are plenty of takes from this game -


Brady throws 50 passes and wins again - A curiously overlooked angle going in was what would happen if the Falcons forced Brady to throw over fifty passes - Brady won his 18th game when throwing over fifty; he is the only quarterback in NFL history to post a winning record - and it is a mind-blowing 18-7 - when having to throw more than fifty passes; Warren Moon (5-5) in NFL history is the only other quarterback who has a non-losing record when throwing at least fifty.    It plays into Brady's hands when he has to throw more than fifty passes.


Roger Goodell is the most petulant idiot to ever be placed in charge of a major sports sanctioning body - Goodell's Wednesday presser was all about his petulant hatred of the New England Patriots and was filled with the lawyerese evasions that characterize a liar.   Contrast this with former commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who acknowledged he should have had the league be more concerned about player concussions than he did.

Goodell's refusal to visit Gillette Stadium comes from his inability to handle being held accountable, and it showed when pressed about it by reporters, not all of the hostile ones being New England reporters.   That indicates the national press is slowly turning more and more against Goodell, and they should.

How will Matt Ryan react in 2017?  - Ryan was almost flawless in the first 37 or so minutes but once the Patriots began the comeback Ryan regressed back to the playoff failure that had permeated his 2008-12 period.   The Falcons O-line that had so controlled things for so long then collapsed on him and it added into utter failure of an offense that had scored 28 points and led by 25 points.   Ryan faces the Patriots in Foxboro in 2017 and it seems a certainly Week One's banner celebration will precede a game against the Falcons. 

Quarterbacking is what wins championships yet again -  The Falcons defense came to play - and it lost.   The Patriots defense was utterly helpless - made worse by Brady's pick-six - until Tom Brady rescued it; in all seven Brady Superbowls the defense was defeated and then rescued by Brady; twice the defense then failed again, five times Brady finished the mission.

Defense has never won a championship - not the 1960s Packers, not the 2000 Ravens, not the Steeler Curtain, none of them.    It has been quarterbacking that wins championships.

What is it where the Superbowl sees the catches that are never repeated anywhere else?  - David Tyree, Jermaine Kearse, and now Julian Edelman.


Why didn't the Falcons run the ball more in the second half?  - Because as the play by play sheet indicates when they did  run the ball after going up 28-3 it wasn't working.


What do the Patriots need to do down the road for 2017?  - The Patriots' smurf-receiver approach certainly works, but it needs bigger guys and more of them to flesh it out - the Falcons were more of a physical downfield-type attack and the Patriots can certainly use that - for too long the receivers (especially Edelman, usually the guy Brady trusts the most) were not making plays.   Malcolm Mitchell stepped up when it mattered most and Chris Hogan made several huge catches as well - not having Rob Gronkowski certainly proved a factor, until Martellus Bennett began stepping up when it mattered most.  

Defensively the Patriots' zone approach too often got them burned with Falcons receivers all but uncontested where New England's smurf corps was almost always fighting Falcons defensive backs.   The Falcons also for so much of the game fought and got the ball harder than Patriot receivers did until the comeback got going.

The Patriots vs the NFC South champion in a Superbowl in Houston - maybe Houston should host the Superbowl every two to three years


Will we ever see another Superbowl like this?   - Probably.   No one thought Superbowl XXXVIII could ever be topped, then subsequent Superbowls showed shocking competition; Superbowl XLIX was the most shocking finish ever seen and the largest comeback win in the game's history to that point, but this.....the winning quarterback suspended on false pretense by a commissioner exposed as a liar by the process, a team that had not made the game since 1998 exploding to a 28-3 lead, and then the biggest comeback in Superbowl history and the third-largest comeback in playoff history after Buffalo's 1992 win from down 32 points to the Oilers and the Colts' 2013 win over the Chiefs from down 28 points.......was unprecedented.   And yet the Superbowl somehow tops itself.  


So who will the Patriots have to contend with in 2017 to repeat?  - The Miami Dolphins are clearly better now and are developing into a genuine contender and Miami appears to be the only division foe the Patriots have to worry about.

In the AFC South there has been the implosion of Brock Osweiler and what amounts to the team's public admission of making a colossal mistake at signing him, though the caveat remains Osweiler was good with what amounted to a two-read offense and Bill O'Brien made him run a five-plus read offense; one wonders if O'Brien might install a more Osweiler-friendly offense for 2017 - assuming a new Texans quarterback doesn't emerge. 

With Houston's struggle the Tennessee Titans, who beat five playoff teams plus the defending champion Broncos (9-7) in 2016 even with late-season injury to Marcus Mariota, look to take over that division and one can be confident Mariota's major step forward in 2016 will continue and extend in 2017.    The rest of the division is iffy with the Colts presently stuck at 8-8 and the Jaguars having to rise from the wreckage of a lost decade, though the hiring of Tom Coughlin to the front office is an encouraging sign.

The AFC North is a mess with the Ravens mediocre, the Steelers incapable of adjusting based on their poor performance in the AFC Championship Game, and the Bengals having regressed.

The AFC West proved itself stout but the Chiefs overachieved and the Raiders played superbly but fell apart when Derek Carr got injured; the Broncos meanwhile have a good defense but it's not good enough to win them games; the Chargers are suddenly in an ugly limbo with a move to LA that's developing into a fiasco.

The Superbowl even had a Peter Hermann sighting!

And of course the subplot of all Superbowls is the ads during the telecast.   Peter Hermann's ad was easily the most memorable.

 

The Patriots are accused of being able to plug in anyone to play their system - well this guy and his lovely wife were signed as utility backs and finished with 80 touches for 1,000 yards and fourteen touchdowns.   

HEHEHE.

The Patriots and Falcons radio calls of the comeback

So it went for the greatest Superbowl ever played.


Writer Russ Roberts also examines whether Bill Belichick is lucky.

The Latest Deflategate Scam

The latest fiasco in the NFL is that the NY Giants reported two footballs from their loss to the Steelers measured 11.4 and 11.8 PSI, yet the story has aroused ZERO interest from the NFL - indeed the league has gone out of its way - and in amateurish fashion - to downplay it.

The reason is obvious - nothing happened here and the fact nothing happened vindicates the New England Patriots.   And the fact the Patriots are proven - again - right is a fact Roger Goodell does not want to acknowledge, because to acknowledge he was wrong is to say to the world what the NFL needs to admit to itself - Goodell is a liar who never should have been elected commissioner.

Sally Jenkins provides the gory details and Dan Wetzel states what should be obvious - Goodell owes Brady an apology. Of course Goodell also owes the Patriots, the New Orleans Saints, the Tennessee Titans (fined because Goodell had a snit over their present ownership structure), and a hell of a lot of others an apology as well.

Tom Brady Mocks Roger Goodell

For Roger Goodell It's Here We Go Again

The No More ad campaign against domestic violence was launched by the same people responsible for the Law & Order Special Victims Unit version - and now a lot of people have egg on their face with the New York Giants involved in controversy over former punter Josh Brown.


Here we go again.   Controversy erupted days before the New York Giants flew to London to face the LA Rams because documents related to Josh Brown were published.   Brown was charged in allegation of some twenty incidents of domestic violence with his now ex-wife; the charges were eventually dropped, and the NFL slapped him with a one-game suspension for 2016, this after their self-congradulatory promise to impose a minimum six-game suspension for incidents after the controversy over Ray Rice.   Documents from that previous investigation have now surfaced, including admissions on Brown's part to acts of abuse.

It led to an interview by Mike Francesca of Giants co-owner John Mara, and Mara's at-times evasive answering intensified controversy over the NFL's handling of domestic violence.   It intensified further when John Urquhart, the sheriff of King's County, WA that investigated Brown when he was with the Seahawks, angrilly responded when the league passed the buck of blame toward him in claiming he covered up for Brown when the league tried to investigate the allegation.  

It is of course impossible to do anything but call Roger Goodell a liar, having proven himself a liar in serial fashion in his multiple failures to objectively lead the league; when presented opportunity to lead, he instead launched aggression against the New England Patriots and the New Orleans Saints as well as numerous players and coaches, all out of personal spite.   As lawyer Peter Ginsberg now famously put it during the disinformation campaign against Tom Brady, "it's very difficult to have a genuine, authentic disagreement with Roger."  

Goodell's competence as commissioner has long been exposed as nonexistent.   Backstabbing and ass-covering define Goodell's governing philosophy, and complete inability to handle the inner workings of the game has more and more become the dominating characteristic of Goodell.   The league's operations department - and general command of situations - has dumbed itself down with Troy Vincent now Goodell's second-in-command, and the league's approach to investigations by now reflect Goodell's fundamental character - perfunctory and utterly insincere.


*****


But the issue here goes beyond the manifest dishonesty of Goodell and the incompetence of Goodell and his underlings.   Even a competent commissioner would not be able to adequately handle the issue of domestic violence because there simply is no simple answer beyond dealing with individual incidents on their own individual basis based on what the law says about it.    What the law says about a situation can't be dismissed by the league - if the law says charges against Josh Brown are dropped, the league can't deny him employment.   And has anyone else noticed that Ray Rice has by all accounts been a legitimate law-abiding citizen despite being railroaded out of the league by Roger Goodell's ass-covering campaign?

As it is the government - not the most dependable of God's creatures, to coin a Spencer Tracy phrase - has multiple and conflicting definitions of sexual assault.   It of course is an old story - back in 1990 (October 12 specifically) the Christian Science Monitor claimed (through Marilyn Gardner) there were five million women assaulted per year with an assault averaging one every fifteen seconds; as Thomas Sowell noted in The Vision Of The Anointed the figure was grossly unreliable, first for not differentiating between unmarried sex partners and legally binded husbands, second for not differentiating actual violence from a minor push or shove (where the figure was roughly 500,000 - and as Mike Florio shows, the actual incident that got Josh Brown suspended was him grabbing his now-ex's wrist ) - and even the ratio was mathematically wrong, as it would in fact be one every 6.3 seconds.  

And unnoticed is the hypocrisy of the media's umbrage about Josh Brown as with the earlier jihad about Ray Rice, for the media once again has been in essence advocating double jeopardy - punishing the individual for the same incident again.   At what point do people figure out that double jeopardy doesn't work?   Or that it's an actual crime to re-punish someone for the same incident? 

There are no winners in this - Roger Goodell proves again he has zero competence to lead the league, the media proves again it is not capable of rational analysis.   And a lot of people have egg on their face as a result.

The Goodell Mirror

Matt Chatham authors a superb summation of the complete dishonesty of Roger Goodell.

"The NFLPA simply failed to predict the league would act with such scumbaggery."

It's clear the owners, while they couldn't make this prediction, nonetheless had some inkling there is something wrong with a career front-office bureaucrat, because they needed multiple votes before they elected him commissioner; they nonetheless took the chance and everyone is now paying the price.  

It's also interesting with Goodell's decision to go after four players named in the now-defunct Al Jazeera TV piece on NFL steroids and Peyton Manning for "non-cooperation." Some think it is him emboldened by court decisions against Tom Brady and Adrian Peterson (which apparently made no effort to actually examine the facts involved), and while there's some validity there, there is also the angle discussed in some forums suggesting it is a power play to the NFLPA with CBA negotiations due in 2020 and the belief the NFLPA will fight against Article 46 of the present CBA - if that is a part of this (and I suspect it is), there is also the power play angle by Goodell toward the other owners, who have been quietly undermining him; one sense Goodell is flexing muscle not just to the NFLPA but to the owners, conveying that he is in charge and no one else.

Why Goodell Is The Deflategate Loser

 

Two pieces in the wake of Tom Brady's decision to hand off the suit against the NFL to the NFLPA warrant a look. The first examines how Roger Goodell actually conducts player discipline hearings - and what it shows is Goodell is a demagogue with zero honesty and no desire to do anything but punish players for its own demented sake. Lawyer Peter Ginsberg notes that Goodell looks for reaffirmation of his view - "It's very difficult to have a genuine, authentic disagreement with Roger" - and writer Tim Rohan notes Goodell takes personal offense when a player defends himself to him.

It's a pattern noted in the past by sports law professor Jeffrey Standen and by writer Sally Jenkins. Jenkins comes out firing yet again by noting that the myth of Goodell having more power now than before is false - "vain NFL owners" publicly won't admit they made a mistake electing him commissioner but privately have been working to undermine him, between negotiating with the NFLPA on a new personal conduct policy and already starting to declaw Goodell with the hiring of Tod Leiweke as league CCO and ex-White House press flak Joe Lockhart (who reports to Leiweke rather than Goodell) as VP of Communications. Indeed, the July 19 Monday Morning Quarterback story by Jenny Vrentas - "The Goodell Decade" - serves mostly as a mawkish disinformation piece to press the myth of Goodell as more powerful than ever.

The owners have already started cleaning up after him. Standen noted it took some five votes in 2006 before they agreed to elect him Commissioner. It clearly is a sign that they now quietly feel they were wrong.

Worth remembering is fifty-six lies told by the NFL about Brady.

Blandino: NFL Security Withheld PSI Measurements From Officials

Dean Blandino's admission about NFL checks of PSI further indicates Roger Goodell fabricated a reason to punish the New England Patriots.

To Sporting News And NFL - Real Resolutions

The Sporting News Football preview magazine is out and it includes a piece by writer David Steele offering ten resolutions the league ostensibly needs to address. "There is so much the NFL needs to do better," Steele writes, "the best route is resolutions.....the change what badly needs to be changed."

Reading Steele's resolutions warrants a response in the form of ten resolutions the league needs to address that are not quite the same as those in David Steele's piece:




The NFL needs to admit being wrong about Deflategate - "Either one side has to give or the two sides have to settle." It's actually simpler than that - the league in the person of Goodell lied about Deflategate from the beginning, has repeatedly been exposed as a liar by his own transcripts and by the league's own court admission to having no evidence, and has repeatedly been proven wrong about the CBA's much-heralded Article 46. This fight has dragged on as it has for only one reason - Goodell cannot bring himself to admit he was wrong, because to do so is to admit he was never qualified for his job, as the punishment is based exclusively on personal spite unsupported by legitimate evidence. It's been his pattern from his very first year and the "Spygate" lie he told the world.


Stop criticizing scouts for the questions they ask players - Steele rages about a Falcons scout asking Eli Apple a "transparently homophobic question," as though making players have to stand up to ugly accusation or ugly truth is somehow a violation of someone's rights. The real world is a nasty place and not making players confront it only makes them weaker.


Stop criticizing Thursday Night games for something that isn't true - It has been a stupid criticism since the league's Thursday Night package expanded first to half a season, then to the full season.   The gripe about safety concerns and work conditions is flat-out false.   There is no increased injury risk, and the lack of evidence of increased incidence of injury shows this.   We heard about how the games themselves aren't well played because of lack of preparation time - this is the one valid criticism to be made of the Thursday Night package.   The other criticism to be made is the decision to make teams wear horrid one-color uniforms that make no sense.


Cancel overseas games - This is a criticism Steele and others are correct about.  The fact is the London series has accomplished nothing for the NFL game, a game unique to the US and Canada and to a lesser extent Germany and Austria.   It cannot be spread overseas.   The NBA game is more fundamentally marketable overseas and even the NBA will not place a team or two in an overseas market.  

Instead, the league should work with other football leagues like the Canadian League, the Arena League, and leagues in Germany and Austria to better make the game stronger and in those markets that truly want it.   An NFL-CFL-Arena-Germany-Austria alliance absolutely can work.


Stop criticizing the Washington Redskins name - Oddly this controversy took a back seat in 2015 but the attack on the Redskins name remains utterly invalid - and frankly dishonest.  "Rubbing an insult in the face of an entire race of people" is a lie.  And who makes the accusation?  Intellectuals, who are not and never will be legitimate spokesmen for anything.   Intellectuals, as historian Paul Johnson has shown, were the ones who created the ethnic bigotry that destroyed the Versaille treaty after 1918 and thus helped create the second world war, and it has been intellectuals who have created ethnic and class hatreds for generations.   The Redskins are a football team, and their goal is the ultimate societal positive - WINNING.  

There is no validity to argument against Indian sports names, and there never will be.



No more franchise relocation and stadium blackmail - The Rams were forced down LA and everyone else's throats for no reason - and as ATHLON SPORTS showed, even the league saw there was no evidence LA even wanted a team.  St. Louis is a sports town where LA is not.   And the Raiders want a stadium in Las Vegas - a non-sports town proven to be such by non-support of minor league teams and the nearby Speedway - when they have the money to simply refurbish the old Alameda Coliseum.   Stadiums are worth building and worth having - that's not an argument for public financing of them - it's exactly the opposite.   The owners need to buy their own buildings and stay in their real home markets - of which Los Angeles, London, and Las Vegas have no claim to be. 



Players need to stop off-season training and instead rest - Baseball writer Tony Massarotti has noted why pitchers cannot reach 250 or more innings a season anymore - because they train so much in the offseason that they're worn out to where they can barely reach 200 innings - "Train less and throw more" is Tony Massarotti's alternative.  It is a valid criticism for football as well - players need to train less February-to-mid-July and instead hit more during OTAs, training camp, preseason games, and in-season practices.   Stop wearing yourselves out before OTAs or camp or preseason.


Make the teams play pre-season games for real - The last three seasons have all seen often-graphic lack of team preparation during the first month of the season, and the reason why is not only overtraining by players before camp starts but the approach to handling preseason games.   "Don't let players get hurt during preseason" is the wrong approach - the teams as functioning competitive units simply are not prepared enough once the season starts precisely because of conservatism during preseason.   It was never that way when teams made camp a true grind and made players play preseason games like they mattered - because objectively speaking preseason games do matter.  They serve as the competition that properly prepares team units to function.



Start giving the players benefit of the doubt - Goodell's tough-guy punisher approach to player discipline has been a spectacular failure not only because Goodell has no credible understanding of any aspect of the game - he is nothing but a marketing hack, not someone with any front-office or team experience or even credible study - but because it functioned on assuming players were automatically guilty.   The fact is they're not.   Having more diligence toward violent crimes requires more objectively examining individual cases on their own individual merit.   And this applies to the sports media as well, for the Ray Rice fiasco would have been avoided by accepting the fact that Rice told everyone the truth the whole time and by not blackmailing the league to committing double jeopardy.



The tie should always go to the receiver -   Eliminate offensive pass-interference from the rulebook.   Completely.   It is the most boneheaded oxymoron in pro sports.   The Dez Bryant catch in 2014 at the Packers should have counted.   Period.   When in doubt, the tie goes to the receiver.  



Let pass-catchers have a running start behind the line of scrimmage and eliminate the five-yard rule -  The hatred that exists in fan circles toward the five-yard rule is frankly astonishing, and the utility of the rule has always been dubious - it is blamed for the explosion in offense and the hoariest gripe is "now they can't touch a receiver," a trite cliche that is flagrantly dishonest.   The league also needs to catch up to other football leagues that allow pass catchers to have a running start behind the line at the snap - it's a good rule and allows more flow to the game.  



Start standing up for yourself in safety controversy - The league's lack of response on its own behalf as people cite the demagogic movie Concussion to attack the safety of football (a tack I've seen renewed following Calvin Johnson's premature retirement) is maddening. Because concern over concussions is unquestionably legitimate yet the game is faster, stronger, and SAFER now than it has ever been.   Much of the condemnation of the game over concussion issues stems from misunderstanding of concussion risk and cause-and-effect, and the game is only getting safer with not only improving helmet technology but also research into neck-support and related technology. The notion that the game is killing its players or even threatens to kill a player needs to be wiped out of the conversation.

Here the media needs to do a better job of covering such issues, and it can start by citing factual and objective data such as the International Conference On Concussion In Sport.



Less isn't necessarily more, David Steele - smarter is more.

Brady Suspension Shockingly Reinstated

Presented is a piece from Pro Football Talk of Judge Katzmann's dissent (to be found on Page 34 of the Ruling) from the three judge Second Circuit appeals court's ruling for the NFL in suspending Tom Brady.

That Goodell's derangement has been personal and not driven by any objective understanding of the inner workings of the game (and the dishonesty displayed throughout this ordeal) brings to mind that his election as Commissioner needed multiple votes by the owners, who clearly had misgivings about his competence.    And time and bitter experience appears to be solidifying doubts among league owners.

NFL: Endorsing A Concussion Demagogue And Declawing Goodell

The NFL is in DC this week and two stories have broken that are pretty big. The more immediate one is that the league and the NFLPA are negotiating a new player discipline policy that in essence declaws Roger Goodell. DeMaurice Smith of the NFLPA says a new deal has to settle present controversies, notably the league's absurd punishment of Tom Brady.

That the league has come to this extends beyond punishment of players.   It basically serves as a fundamental rebuke of Roger Goodell's raison d'etre.  Goodell was elected NFL commissioner to reign in players whose off-field behavior had supposedly spiraled out of control - "the inmates were running the asylum" is the term I've heard used.   The problem quickly became that the players were not the problem; Goodell immediately made himself the problem by handing down punishments based on his own personal spite, and punishing players based on mere accusations.   Sports law professor Jeffrey Standen back during the Spygate fiasco showed how the owners themselves had serious doubts about Goodell's judgement to be commissioner, and now we've had nothing but proof he never should have been elected.

So it would seem declawing him on player punishments is but step one toward removing him from office entirely. 


The second story is that NFL official Jeff Miller, during a roundtable discussion in DC with Rep. Jan Shakowsky, answered a question about football concussions  - "Do you think there is a link between football and degenerative brain disorders?"  Miller replied yes by citing recent research by Ann McKee of Boston University.   That the league cited Ann McKee is surprising given what real science says, such as this piece on the study of six deceased CFL players, a piece that overall refuses demagoguery about football - "It is difficult to establish a definitive link between multiple concussions and the development of CTE" is the piece's conclusion).

McKee has been one of the more demagogic pushers of the myth of football killing its players - McKee's research (and that of the BU group in general) too often dumbs down the definition of brain degeneration by including as evidence of CTE the results of normal aging, and the research has been disputed by the British Journal Of Sports Medicine.  "McKee zealously looks for CTE and the methods she employs help her to find it." So why is the NFL endorsing a concussion demagogue instead of real science that puts icewater on McKee's premise? For that matter it seems the larger media has ignored any source of CTE information other than the BU group.

The game has been safer for so long that to let a group of academic demagogues set a sham debate about its safety is stupidity at its worst. 

Sally Jenkins On The Continuing Goodell Lie

The NFL's appeal to the Second Circuit appeals panel to overturn the overturning of its suspension of Tom Brady got a lot of attention when new NFL lawyer Paul Clement repeated a lie told by Roger Goodell. Sally Jenkins dispels the lie.

Fire Roger Goodell

NOTE: This was first published on August 6, it was updated by early September, and has required another pertinent update at the end of October -


The suspension of Tom Brady took on a life of its own that the National Football League created, and the slamming of the league by Judge Richard Berman in overturning the suspension showed the league cannot escape without some fundamental change, for the campaign against Brady over the 2014 AFC Championship Game has revealed in graphic detail that there is no longer any justification for Roger Goodell to retain his job as NFL Commissioner.   Goodell has proven beyond any objective doubt that he is a failure and must be fired.

Why fire Goodell?  Let us count the ways -


Roger Goodell is maliciously ignorant of the game and of his job  - The transcript of the Brady appeal showed that the league was completely ignorant of the fact that footballs lose PSI naturally and it is just the latest example of how ignorant the Goodell-era NFL is about the game and of its own rulebook. That ignorance was first displayed in Spygate - as Scott Shaffer put it, "The media reports as if filming opposing coaches is a violation of NFL rules.   Roger Goodell shares this belief (and) based his punishment on it......However, the rules don't support this belief."   The start of Spygate was a 2006 memo sent to teams by Ray Anderson about sideline videotaping, a memo that misquoted the rules.   Goodell never tried to correct the error; instead he couldn't accept when Belichick schooled him on the rulebook and based punishment of Bill Belichick on cherry-picking the rulebook where Belichick applied the rule consistently.

Ignorance of the game continued with his punishment of the Saints over "Bountygate."   Goodell regarded player side bets for hits on opponents as some kind of rules violation,  and after a prolonged smear campaign and resultant legal fight (aided by the American Enterprise Institute's data disproving Goodell's premise of the Saints playing dirty) Goodell lost, and was publicly dressed down for his approach by former commissioner Paul Tagiabue.

The Brady transcript repeatedly shows Goodell being caught by surprise by new documents and generally being lazy and unprepared.

Goodell likes to talk unctuously about "the integrity of the game" - and has never offered any explanation why sideline videotaping somehow violates said integrity, or why a trumped-up allegation of football tampering somehow reflected a violation of the game's integrity.   It's because he has no clue about the integrity of the game.


Goodell refuses accountability, he strives to cover his own ass  -  The league falsifying the rulebook and then basing punishment on that falsified reading of the rulebook has become the pattern in Goodell's punishments.   As Matt Chatham and others have shown, Goodell has repeatedly changed the rules - or as Antonio Cromartie put it, made them up as he goes.  Often cited in media accounts was Article 46 of the CBA, except Goodell couldn't make it stick in his past punishments and failed to make it work against Brady  On Brady, Goodell made an issue of "non-cooperation" and treated it as though it were part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement - even though in fact it "didn't exist in the most current version of the CBA....(It was) introduced in the commissioner's panicky do-over rewriting of the league's personal conduct policy, released in December 2014."

Sally Jenkins noted that what makes Goodell's rulings so entertaining "is because he always doubles back."   When Ray Rice's initial suspension raised a media uproar - even though TMZ's infamous elevator video verified Rice's testimony to everyone - Goodell played CYA and smeared Rice to be a liar - and of course lost in court because of it.   Tom Brady's cellphone wasn't important until Goodell once again needed something to cover his ass.


Goodell is a liar on a continuing and colossal scale - Goodell lied to the Patriots - through David Gardi's January 19 letter, though Dean Blandino denials of his knowledge of the ordeal, and we suspect also directly to Robert Kraft during the May 2015 team owner meetings that saw Kraft accept Goodell's malicious punishments; when Goodell stabbed the Patriots in the back it led to Kraft's now-famous training camp missive about how he shouldn't have trusted the league - and has lied about the Patriots.   He lied about Brady "destroying his cellphone" and hid the fact Brady acknowledged changing his cellphones - because it was not relevant to anything.  Goodell lied about footballs being tampered with and lied about the nature of Tom Brady's correspondence with ball attendant John Jazstremski (Ted Wells shared in the lie; the two refused to face that text messages they wanted to believe proved tampering was occurring were irrelevant to the truth - and as Dan Wetzel shows, this belief is contradicted by Goodell's own ruling and the Wells Report). Goodell's side also admitted to Judge Richard Berman the league never had any actual evidence against Brady, showcasing Goodell's shaky grasp of truth, especially when Judge Berman showed how Goodell's "generally aware" indictment of Brady was in essence a sham.   In Spygate he lied about what the rulebook allows regarding sideline videotaping (and as noted above the league's memos falsified what the rulebook said).   He lied about the New Orleans Saints players in "Bountygate."   He lied about Ben Roethlisberger's rape accusation, which got him a four-game suspension in 2010 and was publicized by Sports Illustrated in a lengthy piece I suspect it regrets ever publishing.   There is also reason to believe Goodell is the source of the phony PSI story Chris Mortensen wrote after the AFC Championship Game - which would make him more of a liar in that he himself is the instigator of a smear campaign.

Bizarrely adding to the lie is Mortensen himself stood by the story on an August 27, 2015 interview on an Arizona radio show with Cardinals color analyst Ron Wolfley; Mortensen then added the whopper that the Krafts apologized to him, a claim immediately refuted first by the Dennis & Callahan Show on WEEI then by Jonathan Kraft himself before the Panthers preseason game; adding to the disinformation angle from the league, Mike Florio told WEEI that the league stonewalled his efforts to verify Mortensen's story and that it was part of an effort he called "a prosecution against the Patriots."

That prosecution took a lower turn at the end of October when the league shook down several Patriots employees while examining the visitors locker room for transmitting devices, an old hack accusation made against the Patriots with this specific one made by the Jets that has never been credible (opponent team security controls visitor locker rooms) and which turned up nothing but which raises the question of just how far the NFL will go in its prosecution against the Patriots.

Wetzel notes that players and teams need to be scared because the league has proven it cannot be trusted on anything regarding its conduct.   That the league office has been exposed as a liar engaged in a massive smear campaign against its best team - punishment of success on a vulgar scale - showcases that Roger Goodell must be fired.

ESPN Continues The Smear Of The Patriots

ESPN and also Sports Illustrated released pieces today rehashing long-discredited accusations of cheating by the New England Patriots, this in the wake of Roger Goodell's complete discrediting at the hands of Judge Richard Berman.   Goodel's discrediting by Berman showed how unfit for his office he is for it showcased his megalomania and complete ignorance of the game over which this ex-PR flack for the league office presides.

The ESPN and SI pieces rehash the mythology of cheating allegations made against the Patriots - that the Patriots stole playsheets and rigged transmitters in opponent locker rooms etc. - never mind that the security details of visiting teams control those areas, not the Patriots, and that Spygate was not about any violation of NFL rules, it was about the dishonesty and ignorance of Roger Goodell. It is noteworthy that the only real source for ESPN's story (it cites unnamed sources - and I will call out ESPN that these unnamed sources were made up by the writers) is long-discredited former assistant Matt Walsh, who was fired by the Patriots and was exposed as not credible by the league when it turned to him for what it thought would be a smoking gun of Patriots cheating - and merely got more sideline videotapes.   Walsh does not give information in good faith.

The piece's conclusion rehashes the excuses about the Brady verdict - "It didn't matter that Berman only ruled on whether the league had followed the Collective Bargaining Agreement, not on Brady's guilt or innocence."   False - Berman got the league to admit it never had any evidence against the Patriots - all it had were inferences from text messages, inferences that were never relevant to anything.  In short Berman proved Brady (and by extension the Patriots) were innocent.  "It didn't matter that the Patriots had accepted the league's punishment in May."   Again false - Goodell lied to Bob Kraft in May (and lied to and about Tom Brady from the beginning) and it showed in Kraft's training camp presser where he admitted being wrong in trusting the league.   The reason for the lying stems from Goodell's fundamental dishonesty, shown ironically in an overlooked angle - the effort to pry away trade secrets.

The ESPN piece has earned more notoriety for questions about a 2008 statement from ex-Rams coach Mike Martz.   Among the allegations made against the Patriots is they were able to key on Rams back Marshall Faulk in the Superbowl XXXVI win.  What the piece ignores is the real reason the Patriots are winners - the Rams were about trying to beat toughness, thoroughness, and situational football with athleticism and talent - and it failed. The reality is the Rams thought they were innovative and creative and they were not; they relied on athleticism, not smart play; if anything the Rams may have been tipping their own plays the way they leaned on Marshall Faulk. What Belichick did was expose that football is not about athleticism - and also that Tom Brady is the superior quarterback.


The simple fact is there never was any cheating by the Patriots.    The facts have long proven this.   The league needs to face that other teams need to define their game up, stop dumbing it down and stop punishing success. 

A Reminder About John Tomase

ESPN a week or so back had to apologize for an on-air assertion that the Patriots were caught illegally videotaping the St. Louis Rams walkthrough before Superbowl XXXVI.   That this assertion is still being made showcases the dishonesty of discussion about the Patriots.   One needs a reminder about the falsity of the story, made up by former Boston Herald writer John Tomase.

Brady Wins Appeal

The transcript of Judge Richard Berman's vacation of the NFL's suspension of Tom Brady.

Roger Goodell Random Punishment Generator

A hilarious online game where "Roger Goodell" hands out punishments for anything.

Dan Wetzel On Roger Goodell As Liar

NOTE - The following was initially published on August 5 -

Roger Goodell has emerged as a liar on a massive scale and Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports has become one one of the two strongest examiners of Goodell's dishonesty (Sally Jenkins is the other) as he examines how the Tom Brady transcript showcases the commissioner's dishonesty at work.  

FOLLOW-UP August 19: Wetzel also skewers the league after it got debunked by Judge Richard Berman.

Brady Appeal Transcript

The transcript of the Tom Brady appeal to Roger Goodell.