NFL likely to punish Tom Brady and Patriots for DeflateGate

The Wells report came out today; all 243 pages of it. As expected, it pointed to the Tom Brady, the equipment manager and ballboy as culprits that illegally adjusted the ball pressure to get an unfair advantage.

Fans across the world are already taking to social media to call out the New England Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady for their roles in this scandal. With the NFL Draft already concluded, it will be interesting to see exactly how commissioner Roger Goodell and the league at large will punish Tom Brady and possibly the Patriots.

While nothing is concrete by any stretch right now and there are still no full rumors as to what the punishment could be, we'll take a look at previous incidents and see exactly what type of punishment the Patriots and Tom Brady should receive.

Earlier this offseason, it was released the the Atlanta Falcons piped in artificial crowd noise at home games. An illegal tactic that has been alleged against a few teams but never really proven, the league took their chance to send all NFL teams a message that cheating in any form will not be tolerated.

$350,000 fine, forfeit of a fifth-round pick in the 2016 NFL Draft, and suspended team president Rich McKay from the league's Competition Committee for three months

Ummmmm..... for disrupting the opposing offense's ability to communicate effectively? That seems like a really small slap on the wrist for a pretty major offense. The Team President wants even fired from the Competition Committee, just suspended for a few months. He knowingly broke rules put in place by the Competition Committee that he is a part of and they would allow him back?

Well, let's take a look at another offense from another team as maybe the league just had a good day and decided to let things be a little easier on the Falcons.

The Cleveland Browns GM Ray Farmer was busted for using his cell phone during NFL games to communicate with his staff on the field about playcalls. A HUGE no-no because it could allow better vantage points to be used and watching of the opponent to figure out what they are doing before it goes on the field. It completely violates the whole integrity of the game in that case.

Ray Farmer suspended for four games, $250,000 fine

Okay, seriously Goodell, what's going on here? The fine is pretty large but at the same time, you only suspend him for 4 games, which is a slap on the wrist since a GM isn't a coach and typically when the season starts, are limited on what they can do anyway. The NFL didn't even strip the Browns of ANY of their 10 draft picks.

Even though the league took it relatively easy on the Falcons and Browns, the league has to do something serious to the Patriots and especially quarterback Tom Brady in light of the situation. This marks their second issue with the rule book and knowingly cheating. The first time ended with the Patriots being stripped of a draft pick and a major fine, so we have to expect that this one will be worse.

I'm thinking that Tom Brady is suspended for 4 games and fined $200,000. The Patriots will be fined $250,000 but will not lose a single draft pick in the process. The internal employees responsible will be indefinitely suspended (likely a year) but will more than likely be fired given some of the other details found in the Wells report about their chatter on Tom Brady.

What do you think will happen to Tom Brady and the Patriots about DeflateGate?