NFL Ready To Hand Out Cheating Penalties

The NFL is almost ready to hand out their penalties for cheating to the Cleveland Browns and Atlanta Falcons. It may very well be a way to gloss over what will come to the New England Patriots for cheating, or being accused of cheating per the NFL, regarding the deflation of footballs. During a game. Which is by all accounts cheating.

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According to two separate articles on Prof00tballtalk.com the NFL, who will likely announce the penalties this week will be less severe than originally thought.

The Atlanta Falcons are guilty of pumping the stadium full of artificial crowd noise. The first domino fell today when CEO Rich McKay was removed as chair of the NFL’s competition committee. That was a no-brainer. As the teams President and CEO McKay is in charge of the stadium actions or should at least be aware of it. The Falcons are also expected to lose a draft pick which PFT reports from league meetings will be a 2nd or 3rd round pick.

While the loss of a 2nd day pick will hurt it’s not unsurmountable for the Falcons to get back in a trade down. The Cleveland Browns however might get off even lighter.

Cleveland violated rules regarding in-game texting between the team to the field. It appears that the NFL will be a little nicer to the Browns (who doesn’t feel sorry for Cleveland?) and give Ray Farmer a suspension and fine the team. It doesn’t appear, again according to PFT, that the Browns will lose a draft pick.

The NFL seems to be acting awfully nice to two teams who violated the rules. In New England where violating rules wins you Super Bowls and a slap on the wrist and where circumventing the rule book or using loop holes gets rules changed, (no more of New England split ineligible receivers moving forward) the team is awaiting the outcome of the Ted Wells investigation into who bullied the footballs letting some of the air out of them.

Patriot owner Bob Kraft has been very vocal about his teams innocence so it will be interesting to see if Roger Goodell goes easy on his friend or makes an example of him.

When all of this is settled there is the case of free agency breaches in protocol. Did the Miami Dolphins engage in tampering and contract negotiations the weekend before free agency began? The contract that was reported on Saturday prior was the same deal that was struck a day after free agency began. The Lions are not going to pursue a tampering complaint against Miami and the NFL seems inclined to look the other way given how many teams were actually rumored to have deals in place prior to free agency’s start.

I guess the NFL needs something to do with their off-season time.

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