A number of Saints players suggested the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was fibbing when he suggested he talked to them about the blown no-call in the NFC Championship Game.
But the NFL has since circled back, and said that Goodell did not, and didn’t suggest that he did.
Via Mike Triplett of ESPN.com, the league explained that Goodell was simply listing the people who were frustrated by an easily correctable mistake which kept the Saints out of the Super Bowl.
“Listen, we understand the frustration of the fans,” Goodell said during his press conference Wednesday, according to an official transcript from the league. I’ve talked to coach Payton. The team, the players, we understand the frustration they feel right now, and we certainly want to address that.”
That period between “Payton” and “The team” is doing a lot of heavy lifting, as a comma would have suggested they were members of a series of people Goodell had spoken with.
That’s obviously the impression Michael Thomas, Zach Streif and others had when they accused Goodell of lying about talking to Saints players.
The lesson of all this is, of course, clear: Punctuation is important.