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New England Patriots: DeflateGate, Tom Brady, Super Bowl 2015 odds

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The New England Patriots will spend all of 2015 hearing about DelfateGate from naysayers no matter what the NFL concludes regarding its conduct in the matter, but the team itself is far more interested with the issue of whether it can repeat as champions in Super Bowl 50. The Pats have to face the usual salary cap issues, the concerns about Tom Brady’s advancing age, and how the rest of the AFC will stack up against them in the postseason. Here’s a breakdown.

Tom Brady showed in these most recent playoffs that when he’s healthy he’s lost very little despite approaching the age of forty. The only concern would be whether he’s now more injury prone as a result of age. The season will have to tell that tale, though the Patriots believe they have a winner in young backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. Of greater concern may be that, when Brady wasn’t playing his best earlier in the 2014 season, the rest of the offense looked like a mess around him. The team needs to boost its wide receiver corps so it doesn’t always come down to Brady playing his best, among other personnel concerns.

As for the competition, The Colts have gotten better every year of the Andrew Luck era but showed they’re still not that close to the Pats. The Broncos are a bit of a wildcard with Peyton Manning having a new head coach. And the Ravens can never be fully counted out. But there will be little competition in the AFC East in 2015, giving the New England Patriots a good shot at a strong record and home field advantage again - which just may be the key to making to back to the Super Bowl.

New England Patriots 2015: DeflateGate verdict before NFL Draft

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The New England Patriots are defending Super Bowl champions but are still waiting for the other DeflateGate shoe to drop. NFL investigators are working their way through the evidence and interviews, and attempting to piece together the increasingly cloudy picture surrounding whether or not the team intentionally introduced under-inflated balls into the AFC Championship game. But those fans who are holding their breath won’t have to wait too much longer: the verdict will come before the 2015 NFL Draft.

The reason why is a simple matter of necessity. If the NFL determines that there was intentional wrongdoing by a player or coach or employee with the knowledge of the overall organization, that person may face a suspension or fine. But if it’s determined that there was general malfeasance on the part of the organization, the penalty will instead come in the form of a forfeited 2015 Draft pick. And if everyone in the New England Patriots organization is found not guilty, then that verdict must come before the draft so that the team can exercise its full complement of picks accordingly. But just what will that verdict be?

The details are growing increasingly cumbersome, and according to various reports, now involve everyone from a league official introducing an unapproved football into play, to another official being involved who ended up getting fired for financial fraud. That may end up turning DeflateGate into such a deflated case that the NFL has no choice but to let the Patriots go with a slap on the wrist or no punishment at all, even if it does suspect that there may have been some degree of malfeasance. In other words, New England might as well go ahead and decide which player it wants to take in the first round of the draft, as the pick is likely to be official declared intact before draft day arrives.

DeflateGate: New England Patriots slide on cheating in 2015

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Are the New England Patriots guilty of intentionally introducing under-inflated footballs into the AFC Championship game and therefore guilty of cheating? That may no longer matter when it comes to handing out any potential punishment. The investigation has revealed that NFL officials themselves may or may not have been the ones to put the unapproved ball into play, and that one of them has since been fired for an unrelated act of fraud.

That means, regardless of whether Tom Brady or Bill Belichick or the ball boy or anyone else within the New England Patriots organization is guilty of anything, the league has managed to bungle the situation to the point that determining proof of guilt may be impossible. That’s good news for the Pats, who will skate on this and not end up losing anything in the form of high draft picks or suspensions. But it’s bad news for the NFL, as fans on all sides will now spend another decade debating the theoretical guilt of the Patriots without any real resolution - much like the NFL’s bungling of SpyGate played out.

NFL fan Gene Crites lays out his frustration: The best thing that can come of all this for football fans is the NFL must come out and say inconclusive evidence. Then they should make a ruling that game balls will be provided and controlled by NFL officials to eliminate this whole deal about Quarterbacks’ desire to have balls inflated to a certain pressure nominally 12.5 PSI. That will probably bring an outcry from a lot of teams but that’s the way it should be to make sure the playing field is level for everyone. This whole deal with DeflateGate has been a disgusting ordeal in my opinion and I have lost a lot of respect for former football greats and sports announcers that have been feeding the public their version of what happened without any real documented proof of the issue.