Combine chatter suggests stiff penalty for Falcons

Posted by Mike Florio on February 24, 2015, 7:05 AM EST
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In an appearance last week on PFT Live on NBC Sports Radio, Falcons G.M. Thomas Dimitroff was adamant that team football operations had nothing to do with the use of artificial crowd noise at the Georgia Dome in 2012 and 2013.  Unfortunately for team football operations, they may be the ones paying the price.

Persistent chatter at the Scouting Combine suggested that the Falcons will be losing a second- or third-round pick in the 2015 draft for the infraction.  The NFL has provided no insight on the magnitude of the penalty the team will be facing.

If it’s a second-day pick, it wouldn’t be a surprise.  As cheating goes, attempting to disrupt the ability of the opposing offense to communicate seems to be a pretty big deal.  Given that it wasn’t a one-time thing but a two-year pattern tends to call for an even more significant punishment.

Either way, answers will be coming on the punishment, if any, to be imposed on the Falcons for #NoiseGate, the Browns for #TextGate, and the Patriots for #DeflateGate soon enough.  Possibly on upcoming Friday afternoons at 5:00 p.m. ET or so.

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53 responses to “Combine chatter suggests stiff penalty for Falcons”

  3. Will the Falcons (and Browns) be forever branded as cheaters on Internet forums as part of the punishment as well?

  5. Makes you wonder if the last-second, miracle 30-28 win in the 2012 playoffs against Seattle would have gone differently.

  8. Amazing the Colts got away with it for years. Kravitz and Irsay must be sharing their stash with Goodell.

  12. How much do you want to bet that the Patriots are the least punished, if punished at all? The only team among those three with a history of cheating and, coincidentally or not, the team with a history of winning

  13. Yet the Patriots and Cowgirls continue to march along cheaters lane. Guess there’s nothing to Kraft and roger hanging out at Kraft’s house or Blandino partying on the Jones’ party bus. NFL is a joke.

  14. If this were the Patriots decibel analysis and the impact on play would have led the nightly news on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox but because its the Falcons nobody cares.

  15. “Noise gate”? Really? That sounds like somebody complaining about a rusted hinge.

    Nobody disputes that Richard Nixon was widely and deeply distrusted and loathed by a couple generations of journalists, and rightfully so.

    However, that ill conceived act of paranoia took place more than 40 years ago. Is it not possible to come up with a different hashtag, or must we wait until the GOP does something just as outrageous to coin a new blemish marker to the popular lexicon?

  17. The Vikings were doing this throughout their time at the Metrodome. So I was a little suprised when it was the Falcons who were caught doing it.

  18. Despite the fact the Falcons were still bad while cheating, crowd noise is proven to give the home team an advantage. Bounty gate was pretty much determined to be all about league image as not one player was disciplined for a bounty and not one player was knocked out of a game with an illegal hit. Deflate gate is fizzling out to pretty much nothing. Falcons may just have the biggest form of cheating in the last 10 years. Good thing they are horrible, it will generate leads of a reaction.

  20. 2nd or 3rd round pick? That’s it? Why did the Saints get robbed a higher pick for something that Goodell couldn’t prove but it’s blatant that The Falcons cheated??

  24. If that’s the price for fake crowd noise, what should the Patriots get for changing the outcome of games including multiple Superbowls?

  28. The Falcons do everything they can to get ahead of the Saints including cheating but very seldom have success..

  29. nothing has been proven about deflategate, Mike.

    Lumping NE in with the Browns and Falcons is a very “hey, I’m a Pittsburgh Steeler fan” thing to do.

    BTW, what was the penalty that Indy received for pumping in fake crown noise? Remember, when their CD glitched and the whole world could hear they had a CD playing?

  30. This was a multi yr infraction,,not a one game incident,,,should be a FIRST ROUND DRAFT pick that is taken

  31. This is total BS. What happened to the chain of evidence? Who handled the noise? Why was the noise sold? What about the science, noise travels farther in warm moist GA air than in dry cooler air. Did the NFL keep detailed decibel records of the noise? Maybe the teams they were playing had boom boxes on the sidelines to frame them? Come on Falcon fans, start posting!

  32. Doesn’t every stadium do this? When there is a tv timeout doesn’t the stadium play music? I know it’s not during a play but timeouts are part of the game so doesn’t that qualify as during the game? Teams beware if come close to breaking a rule you will be punished……unless your the patriots then cheat all you want.

  34. Seattle does it also.

    I have no ax to grind as I like the city and the people, but looking around the place, there were just too many people sitting with their mouths closed for it to be THAT loud.

    Nothing against Sea fans, and good for them for all their success, but that crowd noise is enhanced. Sorry.

  35. That should read penalty for the Colts and Ravens for #Deflategate, not the Patriots. There, fixed it for you.

  36. Hopefully they get the same penalty the Ravens got for hiding the facts in the Rice case….oh wait nothing happened to them. Maybe it should mirror the soon be released punishments as a result of the Wells investigation ….right.

  38. I’m a Patriots fan, i’d love to know exactly what evidence the NFL has of any wrong-doing here.
    Is the ‘piping in’ of crowd noise prohibited by the NFL rule-book specifically?

    I have zero faith in the NFL to uphold a reasonable investigation.

    Its seems, as usual, that we’ve skipped the actual trial and gone straight to sentencing….AGAIN.

  40. When can we stop putting “gate” after every scandal? It’s way past old! And it doesn’t matter what teams do or what the NFL does since they lost all credibility when the Colts were allowed to SUCK FOR LUCK. That was the most blatant cheating I ever saw and no one batted an eye.

  42. If this is cheating, then every team that designed their stadium to enhance crowd noise should also be considered cheating. Seattle, Kansas City, and Dallas are first on that list.

  43. The NFL didn’t handle the Ray Rice case properly and ever since that they have been trying to come down on any little problem as hard as they can to show they are serious. Wrong way to go about this by all the “gates” here NFL come on.

  46. Roger will come down hard on Atlanta. But the New England situation…….Kraft owns Roger, and Roger knows it. The Assistant Commissioner is the last person Roger wants to anger, so expect nothing even if there is evidence of shady practices.

  49. What a bunch of hypocrites this league is.

    Atlanta gets hammered while the Cheating Inc gets it’s annual free pass.

  50. And what about the pats deflating balls? Nothing as usual. Goodell is a scam. He needs to be fined a years pay and forfeit his all expense vacation paid for by Kraft. Thanks and have a good day!!!!!!!

  51. Anybody with any common sense can figure out the Patriots will not be found guilty about deflated balls. Why do you think it’s taking so long for the report to come out? Because what does the league say when it can’t find anything? They don’t know what to put in a report that can’t prove anything.

  52. What will the Colts get for trying, and failing miserably, to frame the Patriots? That’s worse than this by far. I guess they thought that would be as easy as pumping in fake crowd noise. Wrong.

  53. Patriots should be recieving picks from the Colts and Ravens for there part in the botched setup. Obviously this wont happen but it should. The behavior of the Media and NFL Execs throughout this farce has been corrupt. The only guys who come out of so called deflate gate with self respect are Patriots. All the behavior I saw by the Colts the Ravens and ESPN is stuff I have seen in youth sports leagues. Lol. What a show.

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