Houston, We Have A Problem

We have the New England Patriots and especially Tom Brady somewhat aggrieved over their treatment by the NFL. We have the potential for the Patriots to win their fifth Super Bowl, for Brady to be MVP for the fourth time, in a season in which he was suspended for the first four games.

The NFL tends to take a bit of a heavy-handed approach to, well, everything. If it discovers a pimple on its neck, it gets out a machete and starts swinging. So the famed Deflategate flap of two years ago lingered into 2016 when Brady’s various appeals of his suspension for supposedly knowing about underinflated footballs ran out.

The Patriots went 3-1 games without Brady, 11-1 in games with. Brady threw 28 touchdown passes and just two interceptions and his passer rating of 112.2 was his highest since 20007, when the Pats won 18 of the 19 games necessary for a perfect season, losing the Super Bowl in a major upset by the New York Giants.

Brady has said he might discuss his opinions of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after the Super Bowl, but discretion will likely win out. Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who helped the NFL settle its 2011 lockout at great personal cost (he left his dying wife for several days to forge the deal), thought Goodell sold him out, along with Brady and the Patriots with the Deflategate investigation and suspension.

There have not been many awardings of the Vince Lombardi Trophy after a Super Bowl this peculiar – if the Patriots win, that is. You’d have to go back to the days when the Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders were suing the league for the right to be the Oakland/Los Angeles/ Oakland Raiders and winning Super Bowls, after which Commissioner Pete Rozelle had to smile and fork over the hardware to Raiders owner and moving-truck maven Al Davis.

Goodell did not attend a playoff game in New England this year. He’s stuck with going to the Super Bowl in Houston. Somewhere, we suspect, he’s got an Atlanta Falcons hat up there in his closet.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman