Fansided

Tom Brady’s suspension and the harshest all-time NFL penalties

By Stanford Crissey

Nov 2, 2014; Houston, TX, USA; General view of footballs before a game between the Houston Texans and the Philadelphia Eagles at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
Nov 2, 2014; Houston, TX, USA; General view of footballs before a game between the Houston Texans and the Philadelphia Eagles at NRG Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports /
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Feb 1, 2015; Glendale, AZ, USA; General view of footballs on the field before Super Bowl XLIX between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks at University of Phoenix Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 1, 2015; Glendale, AZ, USA; General view of footballs on the field before Super Bowl XLIX between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks at University of Phoenix Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports /

More Comparable Punishments

The Patriots’ current scandal, despite becoming such a media sensation, is not as big of a deal as videotaping coaches’ signals or having bounties out on opposing players. We’re talking about a small amount of lost pressure in a football here; hardly big-picture stuff. There’s no real evidence that it even gives the team an advantage.

Last season, the Minnesota Vikings and the Carolina Panthers were caught using sideline heaters to warm up game balls on a particularly cold Minnesota day. The punishment? They were simply warned not to do it again, nothing more.

That’s a far more comparable case than Spygate or Bountygate (seriously, enough with the “gates”); a team tries to give itself a minor advantage, and the league tells them not to. Even if the league believed this was habitual for Brady and the Patriots, a simple fine would suffice, maybe the loss of a late-round draft pick. Just because it’s New England doesn’t mean the punishment should be more severe than the Browns got for sending texts to the sideline, or the Falcons received for pumping in artificial crowd noise.

The NFL needs to have uniform guidelines for this sort of thing, or at least act like they do. We know what happened when a player is caught using PEDs: a first-time offender is suspended four games, a second-time offender for eight. That’s what happens each time; there’s a rule which was collectively bargained. When you don’t have guidelines like that, no one knows where the rulings are coming from, which makes them look arbitrary.

The NFL should take this as a lesson, and stop treating minor rule-breaking like it’s the Ocean’s Eleven heist.

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