The New England Patriots have been caught cheating before under the same coach and quarterback (spygate), so why should they get the benefit of the doubt?

Rofl, explain to me, exactly how they've gotten the benefit of the doubt?  What they have done is presented plausible deniability, while preparing for the SB, while the almighty NFL itself, hasn't said jack shit about it yet.  And let's be brutally honest here, who's had more integrity issues since spygate?  The NFL?  The Patriots?  The Refs?  Sorry son, if all you've got is spygate, while ignoring the horrific shitjob the NFL (and the refs), have been doing, your argument was bankrupt before you even uttered it.

The facts are, science actually explains the drop in pressure.  What's _really_ weird, is the issue's never come up before.  Any cold weather team who preferred softer balls, would literally always be under the league mandated pressure.  Always. And even at 13.5 psi, a ~2lbs/psi drop still takes it below the league standard.  You can't tell me they don't have intelligent individuals on staff, who should've pointed this shit out beforehand.  So, depending on pre-game conditioning of the balls, you could say any cold weather team in the league, has been using underinflated balls at some point during a game, possibly for an extended period.   So, expect an update to the leagues rules about footballs, because they've been dropping the ball on it for ages.

I'll just leave this here:

"At this point, it’s unclear whether the NFL will find any evidence to support the suspicion that someone from the Patriots deliberately caused footballs to lose air pressure.  If the NFL fails to find a proverbial smoking gun, that alone could become a different kind of smoking gun.

Even if (and at this point it could be a big if) the league finds proof of foul play, was it really worth it?  The NFL has tarnished its own shield by painting a Super Bowl participant as a cheater without clear evidence of cheating.  As noted on Friday, some believe that former Commissioners (such as Paul Tagliabue) would have addressed complaints coming from teams like the Colts regarding underinflated footballs not by trying to lay a trap for the Patriots, but by letting the Patriots know that the league office is paying attention to the situation, and that if there’s any funny business happening it needs to stop, now.  Instead, the league office opted to try to catch the Patriots red handed.

But what has the NFL really found?  As one league source has explained it to PFT, the football intercepted by Colts linebacker D’Qwell Jackson was roughly two pounds under the 12.5 PSI minimum.  The other 10 balls that reportedly were two pounds under may have been, as the source explained it, closer to one pound below 12.5 PSI.

The NFL has yet to share specific information regarding the PSI measurements of the balls that were confiscated and measured at halftime.  Which has allowed the perception of cheating to linger, fueled by the confirmation from Friday that the NFL found underinflated balls, but that the NFL still doesn’t know how they came to be that way.

“The goals of the investigation will be to determine the explanation for why footballs used in the game were not in compliance with the playing rules and specifically whether any noncompliance was the result of deliberate action,” the league said. “We have not made any judgments on these points and will not do so until we have concluded our investigation and considered all of the relevant evidence.”

Regardless of how hard or easy it could be or should be to get to the truth, the NFL owes it to the Patriots and the league to get there, quickly.  Instead, the premier American sporting event apparently will be played under a dark cloud, and anything other than an eventual finding of cheating will seem anticlimactic and contrived.  Even if the conclusion is regarded as legitimate, it won’t undo the damage that the Patriots and the NFL will have suffered during this bizarre period of pending allegations that have not yet been proven.

So at a time when the league office is still reeling from an insufficient investigation in the Ray Rice case, the league office now faces even more criticism for a clumsy sting operation that possibly will end up being a swing and a miss.  Surely, much of that criticism will be directed privately at the league office from the Patriots.

Complicating matters for the NFL is that the bat initially was swung by Mike Kensil, a former employee of the Jets with a reputation among the Patriots for being an agitator. (Kensil’s father, Jim, served as president of the Jets for 10 years from the late 1970s to the late 1980s.)  And so on the same day that the tampering charges filed by the Patriots against the Jets over Darrelle Revis became the latest chapter in a longstanding feud between the franchises, the tentacles of acrimony between the two franchises found a way to erupt into a brouhaha unlike many the NFL ever has seen.

The NFL never should have let this specific situation get to that point.  Even if the league deemed it proper to lay a trap, they should have realized the challenges of actually making a trap work.  In this case, it appears that they didn’t."

Source

Keep in mind, Mike Florio has been among the chief agitators (along with Espn, Brunel and Bettis) among the media, fanning the flames of this controversy.

This is bad all the way around. I think it's mostly a non issue, mainly because I think there should be more leeway with the air pressure anyway. Set it to whatever you want at 10lbs+ imo for your team.

The NFL should change the custody of the balls to ref only to shut down conspiracy talk in the future now that this has blown up, and have the teams request their pressure level ahead of time between 10lbs-14lbs.

As for the 'punishment', you can bet the NFL is not thinking about what's fair, they're thinking of what's best for the NFL. So with all the severe embarrassments they've brought on themselves this year, they might overdo the punishment. At the same time, they are probably going to downplay it as long as possible to get past the SB, because billions are on the line, and the extra hype from this overinflated controversy may be seen even as a bonus by some in the league office. I mean they got an opening skit on SNL, that alone will probably get a few extra % points of folks to tune in that might have otherwise skipped it. The old adage 'no such thing as bad PR' is grossly oversimplified, but for the most part it holds true.

Overall though, bar PR is still bad PR, so watch them try to kill it right after the SB if I were a betting man on that kind of thing. They'll let it simmer until the postseason really begins, and then they'll try to look less shady than they already look.

Goodell and Blandino need to GTFO. They are at risk of permanently damaging the sport with their continued mismanagement of the entire shebang. The whole way the rules, fines, penalties, etc are set up is laughably bad. Wear the wrong headphones or shoes? Don't talk to the media the way they want? Big fine. Perpetrate an illegal hit that could paralyze someone well after the play is over? Usually no fine, sometimes a flag, and too often absolutely nothing at all, when in fact ejections, suspensions, and huge fines should lean towards things that show the terrible combination of intentionally trying to hurt a player AND in a way that's well outside of the official rules (eg; super late hits, hits after a play is dead, hits way out of bounds, etc). And fine refs for doing a shit job while we're at it.

They have a history off cheating, it's nothing new really

The reason teams supply their own balls is not because of some cost cutting measure by the NFL.  It is because there is flexibility in how the balls can be.  You do have some amount of leeway over the pressure, the scruff, and so on.  Some QBs prefer their balls to be one way or the other.  

Punishment should be suspension for anyone who is proven to have knowledge of this, a fine for the team, and loss of draft pick

God damn correct. Kraft takes the podium

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000463763/article/kraft-expects-apology-from-nfl-if-no-tampering-found