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Patriots update their Deflategate website with 2 stories that rip the NFL

By John Breech | CBSSports.com
February 26, 2016 6:10 pm ET

When the NFL Draft kicks off on April 28, the Patriots won't get to participate, and that's because they don't have a first-round pick.

In May, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell stripped the Patriots of their 2016 first-round pick as a punishment for Deflategate.

Publicly, the Patriots accepted the punishment, which also included a $1 million fine and a docked fourth-round pick in the 2017 draft. However, recent updates to their Deflategate website suggest that New England is still seething over Goodell's ruling.

A week after the Ted Wells report was published in May, the Patriots created their own website -- WellsReportContext.com -- where they provided a point-by-point breakdown of everything that the Wells report got wrong.

Basically, the Patriots feel like Wells got everything wrong.

The Patriots' Deflategate website still exists, and although it didn't get updated often during the 2015 season, someone has been updating it a lot over the past month. One of those updates came this week when the Patriots added two articles that were extremely critical of the NFL.

In both articles, the writers made the point that the league needs to give the Patriots their draft picks back.

In one article, written by MMQB.com's Peter King, King argues that the NFL has no basis for docking the Patriots the two draft picks.

Based on the weight of the evidence from the past 13 months, and that weight being circumstantial and not convincing, there's one conclusion I've reached entering the 2016 draft season: Roger Goodell needs to give back the picks.
In the second article, lawyer Steph Stradley, who doubles as a Houston-area sportswriter, offered a scathing 2,000-word takedown of why the NFL was wrong and why the Patriots should get their picks back.

Both articles are featured on the Patriots Deflategate website in a section titled, "Wells Report Critical Articles." Another article in the section refers to how science has "shamed" the NFL's ruling, along with everything in the Wells report.

The Patriots wouldn't be posting these articles on their own website if they didn't at least inherently agree with the basis of each story, and each story on New England's Deflategate website rips the NFL.

The biggest problem for the league is that it did nothing to prove the Patriots were guilty. The NFL didn't collect air pressure data from each game this past season; instead, the league did random spot checks.

"We do spot checks to prevent and make sure the clubs understand that we're watching these issues. It wasn't a research study. They simply were spot checks," Goodell said during Super Bowl week. "There were no violations this year."

So the league eschewed science -- science that could've helped prove the Patriots' innocence or guilt -- in favor of spot checks.

The reality is that the Patriots probably won't be getting their draft picks back, which guarantees there will be at least a small rift between the team and the league between now and the fourth round of the 2017 draft, when New England loses its second pick.

That rift could get bigger if the NFL wins its Deflategate appeal -- a hearing is scheduled for Thursday -- and Tom Brady's four-game suspension is reinstated. If that happens, there might be riots in Boston.

If you ever want to know how the Patriots feel about Deflategate, be sure to periodically check in on WellsReportContext.com.

Oh, I was just today texting with someone for a work event. He is a Pats fan.

He members I am a Rams fan and goes: I am so happy you got what you want. You've been talking about it for so long. I thought of you right when I saw it.

Happiness ensues.

Ok. All fine. End of text:

Did you know we do not have a round 1 draft pic because of that BS job done on Brady?

Oh wow do I love hearing real pats fans talk. evil smile. Ha.

I said, oh no, I forgot about THAT.

The fact that it's Patriots shouldn't matter. This whole mess is just bizarre and never should have happened. Losing a 1st round pick when the League hasn't even proved that anything out of the ordinary occurred. The investigation was bundled from the start, the refs didn't know which gauge they used. The League should have tested every ball at 3 points during every game this year but they didn't. This shouldn't be about we think they did it the League needed to once and for all prove that they did it. The had 2 big events last year, relocation and deflategate, which both were grossly mishandled.

I don't like Brady. I don't like the Patriots. So they ain't getting any sympathy from me. But I have to wonder if doctoring footballs isn't done by most teams. And I don't believe its big a deal. I think the punishment was to appease everyone else for the past transgressions. And I think the punishment shoulda been more severe for that. So again, they get no sympathy from me.

Ripper...how do you feel about spygate?

And, just a reminder since people have forgotten, the penalties weren't so much about deflating balls as they were about not cooperating with/impeding the investigation.

Bartman31 wrote:Ripper...how do you feel about spygate?

Every team in the NFL received a warning about filming other teams so the penalty should have been more severe. The real problem with spygate was that there were more teams that should have been penalized but the NFL destroyed all evidence and the investigation stopped with just the Patriots. The League office is good at scripting a narrative that often differs from reality.

http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2016/03 ... eflategate

Seventh grader Ben Goodell may have disproved deflategate

Did a seventh grader named ‘Goodell’ just disprove deflategate?

Young Ben Goodell from St. Pius V Elementary School in Lynn, Mass. rode a football PSI project to a second-straight win in the school’s annual science fair on Feb. 26. He exposed a properly-inflated football to various weather conditions, and may have exposed the NFL’s potential negligence in the process.

Goodell, who took first place in last year’s fair, began his experiment with a properly-inflated football. He then exposed the ball to different weather conditions, including humidity, snow, wind chill, and cold and ice.

“Every time, it dropped 2 PSI,” he said. “The lowest PSI recorded during deflategate was 2 PSI under proper inflation. I had (the football) at proper inflation when I started.”

“I wanted to prove that Tom Brady wasn’t guilty,” Goodell added.

In case you were wondering, there is no relation whatsoever between Ben Goodell and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, which this makes the situation that much more funny. Of all the people to give the Patriots a hand in proving their innocence, it was a Goodell.

[Barstool Sports]

– Kenny Ducey