Patriots Right to Demand Due Process in Deflategate with NFL Discipline History

The New England Patriots may not deserve the benefit of the doubt, but in the light of recent NFL issues, they're more than entitled to due process until things are sorted out. 

This is what Patriots owner Robert Kraft did on Monday of Super Bowl week, as he stood behind his organization and employees, demanding an apology from the NFL if the investigation around Deflategate doesn't yield evidence of guilt on their part. 

Good for Robert Kraft. 

One of the prisms through which many are viewing this situation is the Patriots' and head coach Bill Belichick's long history of skirting NFL rules and policies.

Though the Spygate practice videotaping controversy (discussed recently by Mike Freeman) is the most memorable, there are also issues with Belichick's use of the injury report and the recent legal-but-controversial substitution practice. 

These are the sorts of things former NFL general manager Marty Hurney called "a culture of cheating."

Please note: I'm not saying Hurney is right, or that all of those various infractions and concerns are on the same level, but it's a body of evidence that many are using to tie around the Patriots neck like the proverbial noose. 

That's not how this works. 

There's no mechanism in our American justice system, or even in the way the NFL is supposed to operate on the basis of labor laws, to try the Patriots solely on the basis of innuendo, past acts and implied guilty behavior. 

Roger Goodell Hasn't Gotten a Whole Lot Right Lately

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With how many things the NFL has gotten wrong lately...what if they're getting this wrong, too?

Tom Pelissero of USA Today recently posited this exact question:

"

What if Belichick and Brady are telling the truth?

What if they've been railroaded by reputation into holding media conferences and learning physics instead of turning their full attention to a game that has (or at least had) a chance to redefine their legacies?

For all the scientific theories and statistical studies, the only evidence the NFL has acknowledged is some of the Patriots' game balls were found to be underinflated at halftime, with no explanation for why that was.

"

Again, how can we be sure that Goodell is getting this investigation and potential discipline right just months after repeating over and over that he "got it wrong?" 

This is the weird line we've drawn in the sand around NFL issues in the Roger Goodell era. Players like Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson and others are suspended upon suspicion of wrongdoing purely for optics reasons. Meanwhile, the NFL received the equivalent of a rolled-up newspaper swat on the nose thanks to the mishandling of the issues around former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice. 

In the undercurrent below all of this, there's a grievance filed by the NFLPA seeking to block the NFL's new personal conduct policy, and there have been a number of lawsuits recently for both conduct and player safety matters.

Do we remember Bountygate?

Goodell got that wrong too, and former commissioner Paul Tagliabue had to come in and reverse some of Goodell's rulings in what Bob Glauber of Newsday "a sharp rebuke." Though Goodell had seemingly hoped to make the Saints an example for bounty programs across the league, the post-mortem on the situation seemed more like it he was punishing the Saints on little more than the evidence we currently have on the Patriots...which isn't much. 

Basically, Goodell was overzealous, as he has been time and time again when it comes to anyone tarnishing the NFL shield. 

Then Again, Fans and Media Haven't Gotten Things Right, Either

The rest of us aren't any better, and when I say us, I mean me specifically.

Look through my own writer archives around the Saints situation, and I did just as much moralizing and knee-jerk policing based on little evidence as anyone. A clear look back makes me wish I could go back and tell a younger me to take a breath before condemning Saints head coach Sean Payton, former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and others. 

Don't get me wrong: Things weren't "right" with Bountygate, and it's pretty clear they're not "right" with the Patriots ball-deflation practices. Something is certainly rotten in Foxborough, just like it once was in the state of Denmark, but the ambiguous presence of something rotten means it's time to dig, not that it's time to start making judgments. 

When has that ever stopped the court of public opinion? 

We live in a 24/7 media culture that moves much faster than just about any other entity in this thing we call reality. It isn't just the NFL, but anytime anything happens in terms of news, politics, etc. it is almost as if we can hardly take a breath until the media has beaten the horse to death and has already begun to apply pressure to decision-making bodies to finally do something. 

The world simply does not move at the ridiculous speed of media-fueled mass hysteria. 

When Kraft demanded that eventual apology from Goodell, he also expressed dissatisfaction at the media coverage, saying that people jumped to conclusions. 

He's correct there, too. 

Understand that it doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong. It doesn't matter if someone's knee-jerk reaction ends up being right if the process by which he came to that reaction was completely faulty. It's the same as a fourth-grade math student guessing correctly on a math test and still losing points because he didn't show his work. 

So far, a whole lot of people have simply been guessing about what happened with the Patriots, and that's unfortunate...even if their uninformed guesses end up being correct simply by happenstance.

Before one of the most important football games of their lives, the Patriots need to be on the defensive. Whether or not there's guilt on behalf of a ball boy or it goes all the way up to the upper reaches of their organizational chart, the Patriots have been backed into a corner from which they deserve to come out swinging. 

Michael Schottey is an NFL National Lead Writer for Bleacher Report and an award-winning member of the Pro Football Writers of America. Find more of his stuff on his archive page and follow him on Twitter.