What should happen to the Patriots following Wells Report?

Now that the Wells Report has concluded that the Patriots probably deflated footballs, what should the consequences be?

It’s been four months since the AFC Championship game and the “Deflategate” scandal that ensued, but after some extensive investigating, the NFL has gotten to the bottom of things: The New England Patriots deflated footballs in an attempt to gain an advantage. Well, probably. Maybe they did.

The exact wording of the Wells Report, which looked into the accusations of ball deflation by the Patriots, is that it is “more probable than not” that New England deliberately deflated the footballs, and that quarterback Tom Brady was “at least generally aware” of it.

The report has plenty of measured statements, hilarious anti-Tom Brady text messages, and pages upon pages of reporting. But there’s one thing it doesn’t have, which is a punishment for the Patriots. That part is up to the NFL.

So what kind of punishment should be levied on New England? Let’s look at the two sides of the issue.

The case for a light punishment

There are plenty of arguments that the Patriots should get off easily. For one thing, the Wells report does not provide definitive proof that the Pats deflated the footballs, only that they probably did. And while that should be good enough for the NFL, it is a little different than having conclusive proof.

Second of all, though it caused a much bigger stir than other recent NFL scandals (this being the Patriots and the news coming the week leading up to the Super Bowl), is it really worse than Browns GM Ray Farmer sending texts to the sideline? Or the Falcons pumping in artificial crowd noise? Farmer was suspended four games, while the Falcons were fined $350,000 and lost their 5th-round pick in 2016. Is deflating footballs worse than sending texts to the sideline? Probably not, especially when we don’t even know how much of an effect the deflation had, if any. Consider this:

Can it really be much of an advantage when the quarterback actually improves when the advantage is gone?

The punishment here would probably be on par with the Falcons’, a fine and the loss of a late-round draft pick.

The case for a strong punishment

The case for a strong punishment actually has a lot to do with the reason this became such a big story in the first place: It’s the Patriots. We’ve been down this road before with them, in 2007 when they were accused of videotaping opposing coaches’ signals. Each subsequent scandal, plus the team’s constant success, just adds more fuel to the fire in labeling the four-time Super Bowl champions as cheaters.

A strong punishment would send a very clear message to Bill Belichick and the entire organization: we have our eye on you, and one more of these scandals could make it very, very serious.

The punishment here would be the loss of a first- or second-round pick and possibly suspending Belichick for a couple of games.

So which should it be? The latter sounds a bit aggressive, but the NFL definitely has to do something here, as the Patriots knew they were breaking rules, and still tried to gain the advantage. A punishment would, at the very least, need to serve as a deterrent to Belichick and everybody else about ever doing this again. A light punishment, but one strong enough to serve as a deterrent, would seem about right here.

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