The first hour of Wednesday’s PFT Live on NBC Sports Radio included a closer look at the lingering delay in the issuance of the Ted Wells report. And while babbling about the situation I accidentally tripped over the question of whether the NFL would publish Wells report before or after the league makes a decision on the discipline that will be imposed.
On one hand, issuing the report without discipline creates the kind of transparency the NFL routinely has been criticized for not providing. On the other hand, publishing the report before determining discipline gives the P.R.-obsessed NFL an opportunity to gauge media and fan reaction before deciding punishment.
The latter possibility, as articulated with a WWE catchphrase on The Dan Patrick Show, reportedly prompted ESPN to announce that the plug will be pulled on its 14-year relationship with Bill Simmons.
As more time passes between the issuance of the report and the announcement of discipline, it will be harder to conclude that the NFL was aiming for transparency instead of floating a trial balloon. Especially since it’s easy to conclude that the NFL knew the outcome of the Wells report for days if not weeks before it was released.
The #DeflateGate incident marred the Super Bowl. The Wells report coincidentally (or not) avoided marring the draft and/or creating a groundswell of opinion that the Patriots should lose draft picks before the 2015 selection process began. Instead, the Well report came after the draft ended and several news cycles expired, giving the media a full and fair chance to analyze the picks and to issue the perfunctory (and inane) draft grades before turning to the work of Ted Wells.
The report wasn’t released during the Friday afternoon bad-news dump, in part because the NFL has become sensitive to criticism that the NFL likes to do that. (And, really, why shouldn’t the NFL consider tucking the negative stuff into the best spot on the weekly calendar?) Dropping it on a Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. ET allowed the league to be praised for putting the report out there at a time when everyone could spend multiple days reacting to it. Which secured further praise for the league -- but which also gave the NFL even more evidence through which to sift when deciding what to do about the Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady.
It would be foolish to think that the NFL isn’t factoring the reaction to the Wells report into the fashioning of a punishment. The longer the punishment takes, the more likely that the league is listening to how people are responding to the clunky “more probable than not” conclusion that Larry and Curly tampered with the footballs, and that Moe (i.e., Tom Brady) generally knew what they were doing.
