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Judge’s ruling doesn’t erase Patriots’ pattern of cheating

5 min read

Tom Brady was guilty.

He’s not going to prison and a judge said the NFL couldn’t suspend him, but anybody with a brain knows he made a habit of adjusting the footballs.

OK, he didn’t do the adjusting, but a guy who used to work for the Patriots and referred to himself as “The Deflator” did it for him.

Commissioner Roger Goodell took another beating in a court room and is being pummeled in the media, but does anybody really think he acted alone in his determination to humiliate and punish one of the biggest stars in the NFL?

He works for the owners.

The owners watch television and read the newspapers. Some of them might even read the Internet. They saw the news about their league being dominated by a stupid story involving the amount of air in a few footballs and they never called Goodell off.

And, in case you hadn’t heard, Goodell is appealing the ruling.

Does anybody think that he’s doing that without the owners’ consent?

So, why are the owners allowing this to drag on?

A majority of them must believe that the circumstantial evidence clearly shows that they are right – that Brady and the Patriots cheated again and they are trying to maintain the dictatorial powers of the commissioner.

Peyton Manning, when he was playing for the Indianapolis Colts, refused to hold team meetings in the visitors’ locker room in Foxboro because he thought it was bugged. Former Patriots players, who later played with Manning in Indianapolis, told him that he was wise to have done that.

The Patriots cheat.

They’ve been caught once. Remember Spygate?

And they got off on a technicality this time. Keep in mind, nobody was exonerated. The evidence of the case didn’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt in Deflategate, but the league’s actions are proof enough that other teams are on to them and will try to expose them at all costs.

• The judge’s ruling on Deflategate wasn’t the best news for the Steelers’ defense, which in the preseason hasn’t looked like it could stop Brady if he were throwing medicine balls, but it might actually be good news.

The secondary looks like it has some large holes and the defense seems to be making up for that by not knowing how to tackle. But if the Steelers are going anywhere, they are going to have to beat an elite (I know, I hate the word, too.) quarterback.

If the Steelers are to make a playoff run, chances are they will have to face Brady at some point in the postseason.

So Thursday night, this defense that has been written off by everybody in Western Pennsylvania gets its chance to change some minds. And that’s a good thing.

• The Steelers and the NFL have no shame. After what the people who didn’t come disguised as empty seats were subjected to Thursday night at Heinz Field, members of the Rooney family should have been positioned at all the exits to offer apologies.

It’s encouraging to see people of Western Pennsylvania are starting to wise up by choosing not to show up for preseason games, but only a monopoly could get away with automatically selling out games that fewer and fewer people are interested in attending.

It was hard not to feel sorry for the people who were stuck in Heinz Field mindlessly waving their Terrible Towels and pretending they were at a real football game. If just about every player the fans pay to see is standing on the sidelines in street clothes when the game starts, then the fans have every right to demand a refund. The last exhibition games Thursday night were played in front of thousands of empty seats in NFL stadiums all over the country. How long is the NFL going to be able to get away with it?

As long as mindless fans keep showing up.

Fifty-thousand empty seats at Heinz Field would get the Rooneys’ attention. Based on the number of empty seats Thursday, that is a distinct possibility in the not too distant future. We can only hope.

• The NFL moved the extra point back to the 15-yard line and 93 percent of them were good in the preseason. Instead of focusing on the miniscule difference in degree of difficulty for the extra point, the focus should be on 93 percent of attempts from 33 yards were good. It’s that level of certainty that makes NFL coaches become too conservative inside the 20-yard line and takes so much excitement out of the games.

• ESPN took Curt Schilling, one of the best pitchers of his generation, off its Major League Baseball Sunday night telecasts for comments he made on Twitter. He was replaced by a former fastpitch softball player. If you think that’s strange, don’t. The former softball player is a woman, and if you question the move, then you are, without a doubt, a sexist pig.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.

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