NFL still hasn’t talked to players named in Al Jazeera PED report
I’m not a fan of how every single thing the NFL does is compared to deflate-gate. We probably don’t need, after every NFL discipline announcement, a million “But if it was Tom Brady … ” messages on social media.
However, it’s really hard to grasp how the league could act so quickly, strongly and vigilantly toward the New England Patriots and Brady for maybe kinda sorta knowing about deflated footballs, and act at a “maybe everyone will just forget” pace when some high-profile players were accused of PED usage in an undercover Al Jazeera America report last year.
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You remember the report, mostly because Al Jazeera haphazardly threw in some Peyton Manning allegations at the end. Still, Manning, Clay Matthews, Mike Neal, Julius Peppers and James Harrison were accused in the piece of doping in various manners. None of it might be true. But the NFL seems to have very little interest in finding out.
It’s easy to draw that conclusion because Christine Brennan of USA Today reported that the NFL still has not interviewed any player who was accused in the report. The documentary was released Dec. 27 last year. So we’re almost five months in, players are well into their offseason conditioning programs with their respective teams, and there hasn’t been one player interview?
“It’s our expectation that we will interview the players involved over the next month or so,” NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart told Brennan.
There was also a mention of “conversations with the union over the timing” of the interviews, so the union could be holding it up. But again, nothing stopped the NFL when it came in with virtual battering rams to investigate footballs possibly being deflated. Remember that investigator Ted Wells used the fact that the Patriots didn’t make officials locker room attendant Jim McNally available for a fifth interview as damning evidence against the Patriots, as was the fact that Brady didn’t hand over his cell phone after answering every question Wells had. Maybe the league was just a lot more diligent way back then.
Here’s a timeline of the deflate-gate investigation, all from 2015:
Jan. 18: Patriots beat Colts in AFC championship game, and during halftime footballs were tested for possible deflation. NFL security interviewed McNally immediately after the game. Later that night, Bob Kravitz of WTHR tweeted that the NFL is “investigating the possibility the Patriots deflated footballs.”
Jan. 21-22: Investigators collect cell phones used by some Patriots employees.
Jan. 23: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell publicly announced the league has retained Ted Wells to investigate.
Feb. 27: Wells’ investigative team conducted an air-pressure study.
May 6: Wells Report released. In the report, Wells and his associates list 67 people they interviewed about deflate-gate, including Brady. Many subjects were interviewed multiple times.
May 11: NFL gave out punishment, including a four-game suspension of Brady.
So in less than four months after the NFL suspected the Patriots of deflating footballs, Wells (who was hired by the NFL) interviewed 67 people and wrote a 243-page report, and the NFL came down with a heavy punishment. In five months after the Al Jazeera report, the NFL hasn’t talked to one player who was accused, but plans to do so in “the next month or so.” Interesting.
Lockhart denied to USA Today that the NFL was dragging its feet on the issue, saying it has done “extensive forensic” work on the case as it doesn’t talk to any of the accused players. Manning might not be the easiest player to track down for an interview considering he’s retired (though he won’t sue Al Jazeera America, Brennan’s report said). The others shouldn’t be hard to find, and the NFL has found some of them for other reasons.
Not everything going forward needs to be compared to deflate-gate, but the difference in how the league handled the Patriots controversy compared to the explosive Al Jazeera report is a bit perplexing. Especially when you think about the difference between alleged PED usage and having a general awareness of footballs being deflated below 12.5 psi.
At very least, it’s fair to wonder about the league’s priorities.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
