When I saw the Kansas City Chiefs tampering claims coming out one of my first thoughts was the Chiefs were simply being made an example out of. Everyone knows many teams in the league tamper on a regular basis. It's been blatant tampering in the past, such as a player going ON THE RADIO and unknowingly and publicly admitting to tampering ... with no punishment from the league.
So the NFL wanted to make an example out of one team in order to get other teams to stop doing it because their annual memos to teams to stop tampering weren't working (and why would they work? The league almost always looked the other way). That's where I saw a DeflateGate and Bounty scandal comparison - going nuclear on one team for something everyone does in order to make an example out of them.
One thing I never did understand. Why the Chiefs? Why Clark Hunt, the most pro-league guy around? Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk writes that the view around the league is that perhaps the Chiefs were chosen for a very specific reason.
"By hitting the Chiefs, one of the "establishment" franchises, and Reid, one of the most respected and tenured coaches in the game, all other teams and coaches could decide that they need to dot every "i" and cross every "t" as to each and every mandate, big and small, from 345 Park Avenue," Florio writes.
That's a theory. It wouldn't be the first time that Goodell went after a pro-league guy (hi, Bob Kraft) for an unnecessary reason and then blew it up into something bigger than it had to be.
It seems so unfair that the Chiefs, while they're not denying their guilt, would be chosen to be made an example out of. Why not one of the other teams that undoubtedly tampered?