$.01--The Wells Report was released on a Wednesday afternoon at what is supposed to be a quiet time for the NFL. It covered what has become widely known as DeflateGate, the deliberate improper inflation of footballs by the New England Patriots during their 45-7 romp over the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship Game back in January.

It took four months for the commissioned investigation headed by Ted Wells, who also helmed the Bully Gate investigation with the Miami Dolphins offensive line, to come to its conclusions. Those conclusions are pretty ambiguous and worded with a deliberate sense of open-ended terms.

Wells and his crew found the Patriots at least culpable, if not necessarily guilty outright. The exact words which best surmise the findings:

"Based on the evidence developed in connection with the investigation and summarized in this Report, we have concluded that it is more probable than not that New England Patriots personnel participated in violations of the NFL Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate attempt to circumvent those rules”

The meat of the report directly implicated two Patriots employees, Jim McNally and John Jastremski. It also swirled a lot of technically unprovable allegations at Tom Brady, who refused to cooperate at all. While nothing was ever concretely determined, the “more probable than not” came with the implication of definite guilt. We might not have seen the cat eat the canary, but the feathers and bones in the cat box sure make it clear what really happened.

There was also about 100 pages of scientific minutiae at the end, encompassing over a third of the entire Wells Report. It essentially covers all sorts of laws of physics and thermodynamics, subjects in buildings I steadfastly avoided in college. I’ll trust the more scientifically inclined to draw conclusions from all of that.

$.02--“More probable than not” would never fly in a court of law, but that’s not where this case is being tried. This is all about the kangaroo court of public opinion, and early indications are a definite two-fisted punch right into Tom Brady’s pretty face. More probable than not is good enough to string up the hangman’s noose when it comes to these Patriots.

New England’s cavalier practice of purposely putting a toe over the lines in the NFL rule book is troublesome. I’ll admit to not caring much about this particular incident; did it really make the difference in a game where Andrew Luck was 12-of-33 with two INTs (using his own footballs) and LeGarrette Blount ran for three touchdowns? Only an avowed hater of Bill Belichick and his team would make that stretch.

Given the SpyGate scandal from a few years ago, the Patriots lost the benefit of the doubt with most of the public. While I think that fiasco was also horribly overblown, it did in fact happen. That cannot be ignored. It lays a pretty strong case for endemic, systematic pushing of the rules by Belichick and his Patriots.

I firmly believe every team does whatever it can to push those boundaries. I’ve heard enough verifiable stories, be it tampering with desired players to hacking tablets, or purposely making the lights dim in the opponent’s locker room to tipping off “homer” sports radio hosts which hotel to have the fire alarm pulled at the night before a game, to know that every team embraces some level of chicanery and gamesmanship. Every team, period.

Yet the Patriots are the most notorious, and they only have themselves to blame. They certainly didn’t need any sort of rule bending to destroy the inferior Colts. They had no need to record the walkthrough of the Jets back in SpyGate either. But they still do it anyway. As much as I try to defend the minor and insignificant nature of these allegations, the Patriots deserve the public shaming and poo flinging in their direction for being so cavalier about their actions. You don’t ever hear about the Packers or the Ravens doing crap like this. They might be doing it, but they’re smart enough not to court the attention. Belichick is a football impresario, an unmatched coaching mind. He’s also a little too willing to play with the rules, and once again his team got busted. 

$.03--What happens now?

This is a very tricky question. The purposely ambiguous language in the Wells Report leaves a whole lot of leverage for anyone involved to appeal, from Brady to Belichick to the Patriots as an organization. Is “more reason to believe than not” really enough grounds for major punitive action?

Here’s what I suspect will happen:

• McNally and Jastremski, the two Pats equipment employees directly involved, will be fired. Heck, they might be fired by the time I finish typing this sentence.
• The Patriots will lose a draft pick in 2016, not any higher than the fifth-rounder Atlanta forfeited for artificially pumping in crowd noise. The $350K fine the Falcons got seems about right, though because owner Arthur Blank cooperated and admitted the wrongdoing I could see the NFL upping that to $500K for the Patriots. Or perhaps even higher as this is the second “Gate” associated with this New England regime.
• Tom Brady will be told to sit down for a defined period of time.

What ultimately happens to Brady fascinates me. On his excellent radio show, ESPN Hawaii host Josh Pacheco asked me what I expected and I responded “maybe a half of a game”. Pacheco went the other direction, demanding at least four games and expecting nothing less. He has a point, as about the only real fact in the Wells Report regarding anything New England did is that it proved Brady directly lied about knowing McNally or his role with the team. Brady also refused to cooperate, per the Boston Globe’s handy crib notes on the entire affair.

The cynic in me came up with the one half of the season opener, where the Patriots are the marquee draw in the kickoff game on Thursday Night. No way the league kicks off the new season with such a punitive cloud of negativity, a constant reminder that the defending champions might have fudged the rules on their way to the Super Bowl.

Then I thought about Josh’s point. If they really want to send a message, what better venue to do so? Hit the Patriots hard by sitting Brady for at least that full game, and the next week too. Like the public spectacle of the stockade as a shameful deterrent back in colonial times, holding the face of the most successful franchise of the century out for mocking the rules would surely send a powerful message. If they can do that to Brady, imagine what they’ll do to our team? It would restore public confidence in the sanctity of the rules and integrity of the game.

I hope Mr. Pacheco is right. The more I think about it, the more I lean towards his line of thinking. I’ll believe it when I see it, however.

$.04--One of the reasons the NFL dragged its feet here is because the Wells Report highlights just how easy it is for teams to bend the rules in gaining a competitive advantage.

It’s absolutely ridiculous that the teams are in control of the balls for a game and not the officials. Teams should never even see the balls that will be used in the game until pre-game warmups. They can request a designated ball official to inflate their allotment to a certain PSI within the permitted parameters.

The intricate doctoring some quarterbacks demand of their footballs would be unbelievable if it weren’t true. Some of us have heard about Eli Manning’s elaborate recipe for getting the feel he likes, which includes a specific brand of detergent to make it soften just right. A member of Cleveland’s equipment staff once described to me how part of his job requirement was to hold footballs underwater in the hot tub until they had the right amount of slickness and wear.

This is among the many loose ends the NFL desperately needs to tie up. Teams will do everything they can to push the limits of acceptable rule bending. Why does the league not control the balls? Why do they not oversee the medical decisions on game day instead of allowing teams to decide which players can go and how much Toradol they can get shot into their bodies? Why are the fields in some places allowed to have turf conditions which would cause a golf course to go out of business?

There are so many loopholes and lack of uniformity for teams to exploit. I don’t blame teams for doing just that. In fact, I would be disappointed if they didn’t do whatever they could to win the game within the greyness of the rules. Those lines should be black, not 50 shades of grey.

$.05--The report came almost a week after the draft, a time where most NFL reporters are anxiously looking forward to a few weeks of relative down time. Form Mother’s Day to July 4^th is the quietest time on the NFL calendar, as the draft and free agency coverage fades and training camp has yet to really kick off.

Yet here we are at the onset of the “dead” time, and the NFL is the top story. And not just the top sports story, on a day where the NBA Playoffs (which have been fantastic) are in full force, playoff hockey and several matinee baseball games are quite topical. No, both CBS and NBC led their national evening news coverage with loud Wells Report reportage.

I’ve opined on this subject before, the media overkill and eventual natural saturation with all NFL all the time. Some folks are already tuning out, like my old friend R.J., tired of the relentless 52-week barrage for a 17-week season. I don’t blame him, or anyone else hopping off the NFL juggernaut train.

It might seem counterintuitive to the marketing honchos, but what the NFL needs right now is a few weeks of obscurity. The American public doesn’t need to see Roger Goodell talking about anything. Football coverage shouldn’t be the lead on PTI over the NBA or MLB or even golf for the next six weeks. Absence will make the heart grow fonder. If not, more and more people are going to start making the NFL a permanent absence from their lives.