Goodell opens door for Brady escape

 

By Ira Miller

That must have been quite the conversation Roger Goodell and Robert Kraft had on a couch at Sean McManus’ birthday party the other night. Or maybe they need to sit on a couch in someone else’s office.

Look, we don’t know yet — and won’t know for some time, if ever — what was really discussed in that meeting, which reportedly ended with a hug, but something caused Kraft, in a matter of days, to go from huffing and puffing about the Patriots’ Deflategate penalty to tepid acceptance.

Could it simply have been that Goodell reminded Kraft he didn’t want to be known as the next Al Davis?

Or was some sort of quid pro quo hammered out regarding Tom Brady’s suspension? That would hardly be surprising, considering how frequently Goodell’s punishments have been, shall we say, amended in recent years.

Goodell denied there was any deal, of course, but he did say, “I look forward to hearing directly from Tom if there’s new information … information that can be helpful to us getting this right.”

Two different thoughts there.

“I look forward to hearing directly from Tom if there’s new information.” Sounds like an opening for Kraft to convince Brady to allow Goodell and the league to check his phone messages, something Brady previously would not do.

“Information that can be helpful to us getting this right.” Sure sounds like Goodell leaving the door ajar to ameliorating Brady’s punishment. In fact, it almost sounds like an admission from Goodell that maybe he didn’t get it right the first time. There aren’t many other ways to explain away that part of Goodell’s comment.

We know Goodell does not want to relinquish his role as judge/jury/executioner, but somehow he needs to understand that he’s not working in a bygone era when the first word was also the final word. Shouldn’t be that hard to make him understand, actually; someone just needs to point out how the NFL has been wearing out the backspace key the last couple of years.

The owners are happy, rightfully so, about the way Goodell keeps the money spigot open for them, but they have to be growing weary of the attention that is focused on the so-called off-field stuff. Nothing ever seems final anymore and before you say, well, how about the Kraft penalty, that’s just one part of the bigger Deflategate picture.

NFL spring owners meetings used to be quiet times for the league, when the owners might tinker with some minor rules or vote on Super Bowl bids. Not this week, when they were hit with a double whammy by the NFLPA, demanding that Goodell butt out of the Brady appeal and that he be held in contempt of court in the Adrian Peterson affair.

There was also the continuing talk about Los Angeles, which may finally be closing in on a return to the NFL after all these years of talking about it. What’s going to be fun to watch is the competition to get there among the three teams — Rams, Chargers, Raiders — who called L.A. home in another life.

At least the league did something mildly interesting about the actual game, moving the line of scrimmage for extra point kicks back to the 15-yard line in an attempt to (a) make the point less automatic and (b) encourage teams to try for two points from the 2-yard line. And allowing the defense to score on a returned extra point adds an intriguing, if unlikely, element.

But given the generally conservative nature of coaches (outside of Philadelphia, anyway), it’s not likely we’ll see a sudden explosion of two-point tries. If the NFL really wanted to do something to juice up the PAT play, it would have eliminated the extra-point kick entirely and simply made the run/pass extra point mandatory.

Such a change not only would have added interest to the extra point but, by making that point more difficult (and thus, more valuable), might also have eliminated a few field goal attempts and led teams to gamble more on fourth downs in an attempt to score touchdowns.

Of course, that is probably too radical a suggestion, at least until some car company or beer company agrees to pay a gazillion dollars to sponsor the play.

Hey, that may be a solution for the whole Deflategate mess. Put the Brady appeal hearing on prime-time TV with a sponsor. Hard to believe they haven’t thought of that one yet.

–Ira Miller is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the National Football League for more than four decades and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He is a national columnist for The Sports Xchange.