New England Patriots News 6-14, and Notes From This Week
OTAs, New Faces, Butler Returns, Brady's Appeal and More
Good morning, here are Sunday’s Patriots news notes for this Sunday:
Spikes Released After Highway Wreck: Linebacker Brandon Spikes, who returned to New England after a season in Buffalo was released on Monday after he was reportedly in a car wreck on 495 and left his car abandoned on the highway.
Spikes’ On-Star system called for police assistance at 3:20 a.m. Sunday morning after it registered a front end crash. The driver told On-Star that he hit a deer, but nearby a family from Billerica driving a Nissan Murano SUV was rear ended by someone they never saw and needed to be transported to the hospital. The three occupants, two adults and a 12-year old Autistic boy were treated and released.
The Patriots, whose tolerance for off-field issues is low after the Aaron Hernandez fiasco, wasted little time in releasing Spikes on Monday. Massachusetts State Police have charged Spikes, 27, with leaving the scene of an accident, driving to endanger and failure to stay in marked lanes.
“The charges against Spikes are the result of a comprehensive investigation that determined that Spikes’ Maybach was the car that struck the Murano and that Spikes was driving the car at the time of the crash,” state police spokesman David Procopio said.
After Spikes’ release the Patriots signed LB D.J. Lynch, a 6’0, 250 rookie UDFA from Bowling Green.
Butler Held Out for Tardiness, Returns and “Never missed a beat.”: Patriots Super Bowl hero Malcolm Butler it was reported by the Boston Herald this week, was held out of the first six OTA sessions due to being late.
Butler’s flight to Boston was delayed due to weather and he called ahead to let the coaching staff know that he’d be late. But Bill Belichick is definitely one for promptness and held Butler out of on-field exercises but did allow him to take part in the classroom part of training as well as workouts in the weight room.
Butler took the field for the first time since his Super Bowl heroics on Thursday. He practiced with the first team defense as he’ll try to win one of the starting jobs opened up by the release of Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner.
"Don't feel like I missed a step," Butler said to the assembled media. "I feel pretty competent." Butler refused to comment on whether he thought his punishment was fair, stating, “it is what it is, he said."I'm just glad to get back here, participating, just getting better. Trying to get better. That's all."
Patriots Release Wright, Patterson, Gilbert, D’Orazio, Sign QB Matt Flynn: The Patriots released rookie CB Eric Patterson, QB Garrett Gilbert and WR Zach D’Orazio this week as well as TE Tim Wright. Wright came over in the Logan Mankins trade along with a 4th round draft pick this season, (Trey Flowers).
Wright only caught 26 passes on the season but was a productive red zone target for Tom Brady catching six of them for touchdowns. Wright was picked up by the Buccaneers.
In addition, the Patriots signed QB Matt Flynn to backup Jimmy Garappolo in case that Tom Brady’s appeal of his four-game suspension is upheld by the league. Brady is due to appear in New York on June 23 in front of Commissioner Roger Goodell.
Flynn, 29, is a veteran of seven NFL seasons with stops in Green Bay (2008-11, 2013-14), Seattle (2012), Oakland (2013) and Buffalo (2013). The 6’2, 225 QB was drafted in the 7th Round (209th overall), of the 2008 NFL Draft by Green Bay. He has played in 51 NFL games with seven starts and has completed 219-of-357 passes for 2,541 yards with 17 touchdowns and 11 interceptions.
Most fans will remember the late December 2010 game where Flynn, quarterbacking the Green Bay Packers for an injured Aaron Rodgers played very well in a close Sunday Night Football loss to the Patriots. In that prime-time game and his first NFL start, Flynn completed 24-of-37 passes for 251 yards with three touchdowns and one interception.
The team also signed LB D.J Lynch, TEs Jimmay Mundine, Logan Stokes, and veteran CB Derek Cox this week.
Super Bowl Rings Presented Sunday Evening: Sunday night will be a fun night for the members of the 2014 New England Patriots as they will be presented with their Super Bowl rings at the home of Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Kraft hosted this event at his home also in 2004 and 2005 but held it at a Boston hotel after the team’s first Super Bowl win in 2002.
All members of the 2014 team have been invited including those now with other teams. It is unknown if Darrelle Revis, Vince Wilfork, Brandon Browner, or Kyle Arrington will be in attendance. There should be plenty of photo opportunities Sunday evening on what the latest ring design looks like.
Mini-Camp Begins Tuesday: The next big phase of off-season workouts is this upcoming week when the mandatory Patriots mini-camp runs from Tuesday thru Thursday this week at Foxboro.
This will be the last time for any football activities until training camp begins at the end of July. While competition at certain positions is already on-going, Bill Belichick has frequently stated that the OTAs and mini-camps were teaching opportunities.
Certain parts of practice without pads is difficult to assess as the work along the offensive and defensive lines, the running game and the physical side of the game is missing.
NY Times Piece Slams Wells Report, Will It Help Brady’s Appeal? – Commentary:
The American Enterprise Institute did their own independent investigation on the Deflate-Gate fiasco and their take was that the Wells Report was “deeply flawed”.
The opinion piece by Kevin Hasslet and Stan Veuger was printed by the New York Times on Friday and in a surprising twist, the AEI’s take on this states that the problem is not with the air pressure or whether or not the Patriots footballs were manipulated or not. But rather the issue is with the Colts footballs and how they were handled at halftime of the AFCCG. The entire piece can be read here:
While most people outside of the NFL offices think that the “independent investigation” of the Wells Report was sloppily done at best, will this latest report make difference in the appeal of Tom Brady on June 23?
The view from the cheap seats here is this; although Brady and his camp may opt to reference this report, don’t expect the league and Commissioner Roger Goodell to give this latest effort much credence.
If they do, then a serious reduction if not a complete voiding of Brady’s suspension would be in order. That would then open Pandora’s Box for Goodell who was completely behind the Wells Report and its findings. That in turn would crack the door just a little bit for the Patriots loss of draft picks to also be vacated.
Many fans want to know why the national media hasn’t been jumping on this story like they did with the initial very inflammatory and very wrong Mort Report the morning after the AFC Championship game. The Mort Report stated that 11 of the 12 footballs of the Patriots were more than 2 pounds of PSI under the league mandated minimum of 12.5 PSI. A few days after this erroneous report was leaked by league officials to ESPN, the Mort Report was quietly taken down.
Many of the media now as then… had already made up their mind as to the Patriots guilt and are falling back on the comments by Robert Kraft at the Owner’s Meetings that he’d accept the league’s punishment as an admission of guilt.
At the time, although we truly understood the difficulties involved with Kraft fighting the loss of the draft picks (2016 1st Round, 2017 4th Round, $1 million dollar fine), but thought that capitulating was a bad idea. Now it may come back to haunt them.
Will Roger Goodell heed the conclusions from a true independent investigation instead of a biased one that the league and Wells produced? Very, doubtful.
But Patriots fans can take solace in this, if this case does make it to the courts, AEI’s findings will find the eyes and ears of a judge. And during the Bounty Gate sanctions against a number of players of the New Orleans Saints, AEI presented their findings to an impartial NFL mediator, (former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue), in November 2012. And every sanction was lifted due to their investigation.
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