NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has been talking lately. And we’re currently in the process of parsing through the things he has been saying.
Here’s the quickest and easiest one to cut and paste and summarize and analyze.
Prior to Sunday night’s game between the Packers and Patriots, Goodell confirmed that the league is “looking into” the accusation made last week by Jets special-teams coordinator Mike Westhoff that the Patriots align players along the sideline to impede the “gunner” from the opposing punt team.
“It’s something that we’re looking into, our staff has been looking into and I expect to get a report within the next day or so,” Goodell said, per Shalise Manza Young of the Boston Globe.
Goodell said that punishment is possible “if there’s a violation of the policy.”
The policy, generally speaking, requires teams to make complaints about other teams directly to the league office, and not publicly. The Raiders were cautioned in 2008 about this provision after owner Al Davis suggested at the Lane Kiffin “you’re a fake and a phony and I wish I never laid eyes on you” press conference that the Patriots had tampered with receiver Randy Moss before acquiring him from the Raiders for a fourth-round draft pick.
The Raiders ultimately weren’t punished, and we’d be surprised if the Jets are. Westhoff, whose talking points possibly were fashioned by a lawyer-turned-G.M. who works in the team’s front office, was careful to say that he didn’t think that the Patriots were doing anything wrong -- even though Westhoff was offended by the suggestion that his name would be tied to similar practices in New York.
