Every franchise is repeated cheaters. Doesn't mean the punishments are fair. Pats weren't the only team to be caught during "Spygate" but they were the only ones penalized. There's no evidence that Brady did anything and he didn't give over his phone because he wasn't obligated to and the NFLPA told him not to. Gostowski didn't hand over his phone either but no one is talking about that. There was nothing to gain from giving his phone over or by giving relevant texts or call logs. If no evidence appeared then people would just say he didn't hand over ALL the evidence. It was a lose lose and anyone with a brain and a good lawyer would have kept the phone to themselves too.
It's not proven that anyone OK'd the ball boy to do what he did (except maybe the assistant equipment manager). Penalizing Brady was silly IMO, but 4 games is nuts. Penalizing the organization makes perfect sense since the person who deflated the balls was a Patriots' employee. Regardless of who knew about it, it's a Pats employee so the Pats should be punished. The extent of the punishment was still wildly overboard IMO though.
But yeah, show me one team who hasn't cheated. Show me the PROOF (not just circumstantial evidence and assumptions) that Brady had ANYTHING to do with illegal activity. Show me why it was okay that the Pats were penalized $750k and a 1st Rd pick for Spygate but the Jets or Panthers who did the EXACT same thing got 0 penalty.
I'm sure I'm going to get downvoted just because I'm defending the Pats. But as a Steelers fan I'd hope that other Steelers fans could at least think logically rather than repeat the blind hatred of the Pats. There are plenty of reasons to hate them, so why resort to this? Hate them for on the field stuff they've done, not for unproven allegations and a complete BS report that uncovered basically nothing after 100+ days and 250+ pages that we didn't know after day 1.
I feel like if anything, Steelers fans should understand how absurd Goodell and his punishments are. Stop defending him for repeating these absurd punishments just because they're against a team we all hate.