[BostonCard]

A guest on the Boston sports talk radio show made a good point this morning.  Suspending Brady actually affects the competitive balance of the season.  The teams that get to play the Pats without Brady get an unfair advantage.  Suspending him for the entire season solves that problem, but that seems extreme to me.  Suspending him against just Colts would seem to redress the team he got caught cheating against, except it would be naive to think he and his boys have not been doing this for a long time.  Also I think the Colts want a chance for retribution on the playing field.  A potential compromise would be to suspend Brady against his division opponents for one game each, three games total.  That limits the impact on competitive balance to one potential wild card spot for teams that are already at a competitive disadvantage from playing in the Patriots' division.

I don't think that's going to be much of a consideration.  First of all, competitive issues never factor into other punishment decisions.  When Ndomekung Suh gets suspended, that affects the competitive balance, but that doesn't become a consideration in the length of time or pattern of his suspension.

More importantly, the NFL doesn't have a balanced schedule anyways.  Different teams, even within the same division, don't all play the same schedule.  Yes, they get a double round robin (6 games within division), and play the same in conference and cross conference division, but they also get some games based on the prior year's results.

Bottom line, I don't think the nfl makes this a consideration.

BC

[BostonCard]

A guest on the Boston sports talk radio show made a good point this morning.  Suspending Brady actually affects the competitive balance of the season.  The teams that get to play the Pats without Brady get an unfair advantage.  Suspending him for the entire season solves that problem, but that seems extreme to me.  Suspending him against just Colts would seem to redress the team he got caught cheating against, except it would be naive to think he and his boys have not been doing this for a long time.  Also I think the Colts want a chance for retribution on the playing field.  A potential compromise would be to suspend Brady against his division opponents for one game each, three games total.  That limits the impact on competitive balance to one potential wild card spot for teams that are already at a competitive disadvantage from playing in the Patriots' division.

I don't think that's going to be much of a consideration.  First of all, competitive issues never factor into other punishment decisions.  When Ndomekung Suh gets suspended, that affects the competitive balance, but that doesn't become a consideration in the length of time or pattern of his suspension.

More importantly, the NFL doesn't have a balanced schedule anyways.  Different teams, even within the same division, don't all play the same schedule.  Yes, they get a double round robin (6 games within division), and play the same in conference and cross conference division, but they also get some games based on the prior year's results.

Bottom line, I don't think the nfl makes this a consideration.

BC