Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
The unfortunate truth is that this will be handled very different in 2019 than it would've been in 1970 or 1940. The NFL is a business today, and their first priority is to protect their brand. We've seen that they don't care so much about protecting the sport.
With that in mind, they can't come out and say that the New England franchise is cheating again and six past Super Bowls must be forfeited. It just won't happen. I wouldn't even bank on a severe penalty unless it becomes obvious that the cheating has severely damaged public trust and people are literally abandoning the league as fans. Unfortunately, I see a lot of outrage, but not a lot of financial loss for the league.
I suspect they'll slap them on the wrist and maybe fine them a first-round pick or something, and then they'll try to sweep it under the rug. And Belichick and Kraft will lie low for a season and then start cheating again.
The thing I don't understand is that other teams have to know this, right? Espionage is a two-way street. We won the Battle of Midway because we knew that the Japanese were filming our practices and stuff, so we sent out fake messages and then destroyed them with long bombs when they reacted to our fake signals. Why don't NFL teams feed the spies false signals and then use that to destroy them? Is it just that it's too confusing for their own players?
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Things feel different this time:
- Cheating is a bigger deal than ever with the Astros thing going on
- Teams seem openly fed up with it. See McDermott, Reid, Taylor recent reactions. I'd imagine other owners are fed up with it too.
- The NFL can't be happy about the way the Pats thumbed their nose at them over Deflategate. Kraft destroyed every last bit of goodwill with Goodell.
- The Pats dynasty is almost ending. Brady is old. Kraft's reputation is torn to shreds.
Also... I don't sense the Jets had much damaging on the Pats during Spygate. The Pats had the most damning evidence which the NFL destroyed. The Bengals may have a silver bullet here. And they... not the Pats or NFL... own it.