Bob Kravitz Admits Deflategate Was A Mistake

chevss454

Data-driven decision-making is science and art.
Joined
Mar 8, 2010
Messages
76,519
Reaction score
38,065
Points
113
Location
Canton, MA
Well, mostly...


Her name is Julie Marron and she’s the director of a recent documentary called “Four Games in Fall.” It’s about Deflategate, which began at 12:55 a.m. January 19, 2015, a few hours after the Patriots smacked the Colts, 45-7, in the AFC Championship Game.

I know something about Deflategate.

I broke the stupid story.

But given my involvement, I wanted to speak to Marron, whose compelling documentary makes a strong case that the Deflategate science was flawed, that Exponent, the company hired to investigate the science, was basically a science-for-hire, doubt-science operation and that the NFL’s investigation was deeply flawed as well.

“Based on all the research I’ve done,” Marron said, “I don’t believe anything improper happened. I was very satisfied there wasn’t a scandal; not only wasn’t there a body, but nobody was missing.”

Over the next hour, we talked. She told me her hypothesis. She told me she had no horse in the race, having grown up with little to no interest in football. She told me about how an MIT scientist (an Eagles fan) proved the deflation could all be explained by natural atmospheric conditions. She brought in experts on “science for hire,” or “doubt science,” making the case that Exponent, the company the Wells Report used during the investigation, was known for producing pre-determined outcomes.

She pointed to the many dubious steps that were taken throughout the investigation, the way the league manipulated the media for its purposes. She pointed to all the more pressing issues facing the league, like domestic violence and traumatic brain injury, and views Deflategate as a manufactured deflection or, as ESPN’s Don Van Natta and Seth Wickersham suggested, it was a makeup call for the mishandling of Spygate.

The documentary is decidedly one-sided; no voices are offering the counterargument. But it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Marron and her team reached out to the NFL, reached out to Wells, reached out to Exponent and all of them declined to be interviewed.

“The NFL deliberately lied about things, withheld information and spent months digging in to construct a narrative,” she said. “To me, the fact that they could do this to arguably the most successful player in the league was pretty chilling,”

Here we were, talking nearly six years after the whole thing began, and I began wondering in earnest: Could I have been wrong about Deflategate, the scandal/fiasco that seized the American sporting consciousness for nearly a year and resulted in Tom Brady’s four-game suspension and other Patriots-related penalties?

Well?
Is it possible?

Mistakes were made​

In the months to come, I made some mistakes, but reporting the existence of the investigation wasn’t one of them.

I didn’t know if Brady and the Patriots were guilty of anything or not, but I knew an investigation was underway, I shared that news and frankly, I’m damned proud of it. It was right, 100 percent right.

Here’s where I screwed up:

The next day, legendary ESPN national football reporter Chris Mortensen tweeted that 11 of 12 Patriots footballs came in 2 pounds per square inch lighter than the rules allow. I had no reason to doubt Mort or his source; if he’s broken a thousand stories, 999 of them have been right on target. If this was some no-name blog from some guy in Sheboygan, it wouldn’t have registered, but this was Mort, for crying out loud.

Well, this was the one time he got it wrong because he was provided with bad information. Someone at the NFL was acting in bad faith. This was the one out of a thousand.

Now, two days later, back in Indy, I saw the tweet. And I reacted viscerally, which sometimes makes for great tweets and sometimes leaves you bathed in regret.

I tweeted this:


View: https://twitter.com/bkravitz/status/557759912173125634

and this

View: https://twitter.com/bkravitz/status/557760530832961536


The thinking there was that Belichick, a micro-manager of the highest order, had to be involved in this scandal, had to know exactly what was going on. He knows everything, right?

Well.

That’s a pitch I wish I had back.
There are a couple of things along those same lines I wish I had back, but that’s the one that came to mind.

My other regret is I failed to remain above the fray. Understand, I was getting crushed on Twitter and by some members of the Boston media, who I felt were blindly circling the wagons around the uber-successful local franchise. I was genuinely prepared to live with the Wells Report findings, but it’s human nature that when you break a story, you become somewhat proprietary about it. And then with so many people questioning my integrity and methods and just about everything else both professionally and personally, I dug my heels in.

But hey, when your wife and daughters are becoming social-media collateral damage, it’s only natural to fight back. I could handle the threats and the anti-Semitic nonsense, but when you’re involving my family, everything changes.

Goodell’s authority reigns​

It may very well be that science was flawed. We tend to believe whatever science confirms our currently-held bias. If you believed they were innocent, you seized upon the MIT study. If you believed they were dirty, you found evidence in another scientific study from another researcher from an equally august university. Clearly, the investigation was a mess. Clearly, Exponent, while it does some good work and has noted scientists on its payroll, does have a reputation as a science-for-hire outfit, like so many are.

But here’s the bottom line, and on this count, Marron and I agree: In the collective bargaining agreement, the players agreed to give commissioner Roger Goodell the unquestioned, unilateral power to rule on disciplinary issues. So whatever you thought of the process, or the fact Goodell did not recuse himself while hearing the appeal of his own initial ruling (a mistake) the bottom line remained: He had the ultimate authority to do whatever he wanted in this case or any disciplinary case.

Right, wrong or indifferent, this was Goodell’s call to make.
Want to blame somebody? Blame the NFL Players Association.

Six years later, I am trying to maintain an open mind. The documentary is fascinating and, if you’re interested, it’s available on Amazon, Google, YouTube and iTunes.

Was I wrong to think that something happened?
I don’t think I was.
Maybe that makes me bullheaded, or worse.

Now, can I “prove” it? No more than the Wells Report could. But remember in that case, it was a lower threshold of proof, like a civil case rather than a criminal case. Remember the words “more probable than not” sufficed. We’re not in “innocent until proven guilty” territory here.

And I still laugh at the notion that the texts, which included one equipment manager calling himself “the deflator” were supposed to be related to a man forever hoping to drop weight (as the Patriots’ counter-argument went).

After I spoke with Marron, I re-watched the documentary. I wanted to give her words and her work a chance to resonate once again. Now, six years after the Deflategate tweet, my general sense has remained largely the same. While it’s not provable, I believe something untoward occurred in the minutes before the Patriots-Colts game.

But I am open-minded, too, and am always willing to listen to more arguments on either side.

Six years later, there is a seed – just a seed – of doubt.
 
Still a gullible idiot.

In this piece you have a guy that knows he was wrong playing both ends against the middle to declare.......what? He doubts everything he initially believed, goes on to list all the myriad reasons why the Pats got railroaded and then, finally, concludes that he was probably right all along, but can't prove it.

If you have been studying up on this fiasco for 6 years and all you have is a seed - just a seed - of doubt------- then you are more of a farmer than you are a journalist.
 
It was down to a combo of Bill's stupidity with Spygate and then the Patriots winning year after year that drove the derangement of DG. Anyone with half a brain or a car with tyre pressure sensors knows how your tyre pressure changes with the temperature. It was a sham and morons like Mike Silver on NFLN really made fools of themselves over the whole thing. You also had idiots like Tomlin whining about the headsets being jammed by the Patriots. They all came out of the woodwork.
 
It wasn't just a singular MIT professor that disproved this bullshit through basic science. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago, Boston College, Rockefeller University, University of Illinois, Bowdoin College, Stanford, Penn, University of Michigan, Purdue, UC Berkley, University of Delaware, University of Minnesota, and USC all disproved deflategate. If you still have doubts after all of them did that, you are an idiot.
 
It's interesting that Brady making it to his 14th conference champ game with a different team makes Kravitz all of a sudden reflective and remorseful where he has to rehash a story from 6 years ago? This run by Brady has no limits on what it brings out of people.
 
Still a gullible idiot.

In this piece you have a guy that knows he was wrong playing both ends against the middle to declare.......what? He doubts everything he initially believed, goes on to list all the myriad reasons why the Pats got railroaded and then, finally, concludes that he was probably right all along, but can't prove it.

If you have been studying up on this fiasco for 6 years and all you have is a seed - just a seed - of doubt------- then you are more of a farmer than you are a journalist.
Perhaps it did ruin his journalist career more than we know. I have no explanation why he would write this story except to save his career.
Or perhaps watching Brady continue to win all these years later makes him realize how preposterously stupid air pressure was in the first place and he feels shame? Of course, he could just be trying to stay relevant by writing this story on Brady's coattails of his 14th champ game. That's the best I got.
 
while it was the colts game balls that set it all off, never forget it was john harbawl* of the ratbirds who set this whole thing in motion... The ratbirds have a favored nation status in the league front office because biscotti and goodell are tight... Kravitz got played when this was leaked to him, and he fell for it hook line and sinker... he walked out all the nfl front office propaganda for the world to see... to see him walk it back, even the very little bit he did in this article, is a damning indictment of the farce that was known as deflate gate...

It really angers me because of the cost the Patriots paid over a farts worth of air missing from a football on a cold winters night...


*- i know that smug bastard had his slimy ass fingers all over this - herr goodells cronies were waiting for it, watching, ready to pass judgement at a moments notice
 
The Deflategate unindicted co-conspirators:
written by Jerry Thornton in 2018 after Kravitz was fired. Kravitz is now writing for the Athletic, mostly about basketball.
Kensil: Exiled by the NFL to Communist China
Grigson: Fired by the Colts
The Colts: 21-19, no playoff appearances
The Ravens: 23-27, no playoff appearances
Kravitz: Fired by KTHR
 
the gas laws didn't matter... what should have mattered was when they stuck in needle in the Colts balls and got lower readings too, the whole sting should have fallen apart... but the animosity directed at the Patriots by the front office was so palpable that basic fairness was tossed out the window
 
His confession that he even might have been wrong is 5 years and 364 days too late. What a turd.
And literally days before Brady plays in his first NFCCG. This was calculated for clicks.
 
Back
Top