McDermott/Beane press conference 8/27: Matt Araiza released

[Doc]

5 minutes ago, BUFFALOBART said:

No.

You??

 

Yeah, you did.  

[Beck Water]

1 hour ago, PromoTheRobot said:

So the Bills beat media blame the team for "not knowing sooner" and how all this information was out there earlier. Yet those same reporters didn't know either. 

 

It's the "job" of the Bills FO to do deep research on the backgrounds of all the players on their draft boards.

 

That's not in the job descriptions of local reporters.

 

 

50 minutes ago, Forlorn hope said:

Fairburn and skurski etc think the buffalo bills have cia, nsa and fbi resources. Maybe even the kgb too...

 

To be fair, I don't think CIA, NSA and FBI resources were needed.  Per comments released by the university, rumors of the gang rape in an off-campus house where football players lived, and that it involved Matt Araiza, were circulating through the athletic department and "99% of the football team" knew about it.  There was a police investigation.

 

This is exactly the sort of thing area scouts and background investigators employed by teams are supposed to be able to find out.  So there was probably a ball to catch, and it was dropped

 

I think some people here made a likely correct observation that the Bills may not have expected to be able to draft Araiza where they had him slotted (5th-7th round) and may not have resourced this - or their area scout may not have been the best at this.

 

To return to the topic, I think Fairburn's opinion piece in the Athletic is total crap.  Skurski's piece strikes me as moderately factual.  YMMV.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Beck Water

[Coach Tuesday]

Just don’t draft punters.  Ever.  It’s unnecessary.

[FireChans]

1 hour ago, PromoTheRobot said:

So the Bills beat media blame the team for "not knowing sooner" and how all this information was out there earlier. Yet those same reporters didn't know either. 

Why would Timmy do anything so difficult like investigate when he can write scathing Tweets from the comfort of his own couch?

[Warcodered]

16 minutes ago, Beck Water said:

 

It's the "job" of the Bills FO to do deep research on the backgrounds of all the players on their draft boards.

 

That's not in the job descriptions of local reporters.

 

 

 

To be fair, I don't think CIA, NSA and FBI resources were needed.  Per comments released by the university, rumors of the gang rape in an off-campus house where football players lived, and that it involved Matt Araiza, were circulating through the athletic department and "99% of the football team" knew about it.  There was a police investigation.

 

This is exactly the sort of thing area scouts and background investigators employed by teams are supposed to be able to find out.  So there was probably a ball to catch, and it was dropped

 

I think some people here made a likely correct observation that the Bills may not have expected to be able to draft Araiza where they had him slotted (5th-7th round) and may not have resourced this - or their area scout may not have been the best at this.

 

To return to the topic, I think Fairburn's opinion piece in the Athletic is total crap.  Skurski's piece strikes me as moderately factual.  YMMV.

How in depth an investigation do you do on a 6th round pick though?

[Shaw66]

11 hours ago, PromoTheRobot said:

 

Kim is still recovering from what is rumored to be a stroke. Did you want them to wheel her out for you?

Thanks.  I hadn't heard that rumor.  

[Beck Water]

14 hours ago, Warcodered said:

That may have well crystalized why it was very much time to move on, from a team perspective they might want to control exactly how any message gets out, but that's not reasonable to expect for someone in this situation.

 

I believe it's an NFL rule that players are not supposed to tweet or make other social media posts during a game.  Certainly personal phone use is prohibited on the sidelines.

 

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a guy who is still on the team, but has been pulled aside for being personally involved in a huge distraction, to have the judgement to refrain from putting out a statement DURING THE ACTUAL GAME.

 

You could tell McDermott was pissed about that and it may have been part of an "OK, Enough" moment.

 

1 minute ago, Warcodered said:

How in depth an investigation do you do on a 6th round pick though?

 

Fair question, and the answer may vary from team to team.

 

Probably for the two teams who picked up on something, the answer is "if he's on our board anywhere, we do this kind of background".

Maybe for other teams, the answer is "if we've got him rated 6th or 7th round, Not much"

 

I expect this experience is going to cause the Bills and several other teams to re-visit their procedures on this point.

[Shaw66]

11 hours ago, Forlorn hope said:

Josh Allen quoted rick Ross lyrics to his friends when he was 14-15...

 

It was a hit job by ESPN for obvious reasons. And its part of many reasons why that network is no longer relevant 

Point is that the Bills are not unfamiliar with media eruptions.   

 

Each media eruption is different, but I'm sure the PR people have general principles they use to guide them through each.  One of the principles must be if it has the probability of a scandal is high enough, get out of the headlines as soon as possible.  Bills might have decided in late July that the probability was high and simply cut him then.   Obviously, they thought the probability was relatively small and they decided to keep their punter.  When the story broke, the probability for scandal escalated, and the Bills did what was necessary to get out of the headlines.  

[Shaw66]

27 minutes ago, Beck Water said:

 

This is exactly the sort of thing area scouts and background investigators employed by teams are supposed to be able to find out.  So there was probably a ball to catch, and it was dropped

 

 

Well, Beane seemed to think that most teams didn't know about this.  From reading here, it sounds like there have been only two teams who said they knew before the draft, then the ball wasn't dropped.  Two teams just had guys who made highlight-reel catches.  

 

What will happen, I'm sure, is that the Bills will ask themselves what questions should have been asked, or what people should have been contacted, and those questions and people will become part of the process going forward.  

[Warcodered]

8 minutes ago, Beck Water said:

I believe it's an NFL rule that players are not supposed to tweet or make other social media posts during a game.  Certainly personal phone use is prohibited on the sidelines.

 

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a guy who is still on the team, but has been pulled aside for being personally involved in a huge distraction, to have the judgement to refrain from putting out a statement DURING THE ACTUAL GAME.

 

You could tell McDermott was pissed about that and it may have been part of an "OK, Enough" moment.

Right what I'm saying is that, that moment made it clear that the expectation that Ariaza could just fall in line with the teams media response wasn't reasonable. In a situation like this it makes perfect sense for him to follow his legal representations advice on how best to defend himself not the team.

[Beck Water]

32 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

Well, Beane seemed to think that most teams didn't know about this.  From reading here, it sounds like there have been only two teams who said they knew before the draft, then the ball wasn't dropped.  Two teams just had guys who made highlight-reel catches.  

 

What will happen, I'm sure, is that the Bills will ask themselves what questions should have been asked, or what people should have been contacted, and those questions and people will become part of the process going forward.  

 

Now let's be clear here.  Beane said that "we're up into the double-digits (meaning 10 or more) and no one knew about this"

10 is not "most"

10 is not even "the majority"

 

Nor is it "only" 2 teams who said they knew; the AP reporter who broke that said that he contacted 5 teams, 2 knew there was "something" (didn't dig because they didn't plan to draft a punter), 3 didn't know.

 

I posted the probability elsewhere that what were the odds, if "only" 2 teams knew and Beane contacted 10 teams, he missed finding one that knew?  That's 45% assuming it's random (it's probably not random; the AP reporter and Beane probably reached out first to teams where they have the best contacts)

 

I agree with your second paragraph: Beane will learn from this and their pre-draft process will change.

 

27 minutes ago, Warcodered said:

Right what I'm saying is that, that moment made it clear that the expectation that Ariaza could just fall in line with the teams media response wasn't reasonable. In a situation like this it makes perfect sense for him to follow his legal representations advice on how best to defend himself not the team.

 

OK.  But his legal representative has also said that he "hoped the team would not cut Araiza".  His client's interest is not limited to how "best to defend himself".  If he wants the team to not cut Araiza, he needs to refrain from actions that make it more likely - I don't think it's reasonable to believe that there's a significant difference to Araiza's defense if he makes the statement during the game, vs. after the game or even after talking to the team.

 

Personally from various things said, I would say Araiza's legal representative may possibly be a competent defense lawyer, but he's shown himself inept at handling a sexual assault/rape allegation that could reasonably be expected to come into the public arena.  The June 3 and July 29th LA Times article that quoted the victim's lawyer made it clear he was gonna "go there" if criminal charges were not forthcoming PDQ.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Beck Water

[BillsFanSD]

8 minutes ago, Sierra Foothills said:

As I stated upstream, objectively the Bills have made some missteps during this controversy. MINIMALLY:

• The Bills either willfully (or not) ignored information that other teams were aware of... that Araiza and the SDSU football team were the subject of a rape investigation.

I haven't seen any evidence at all that any NFL teams knew about this allegation or that Araiza was connected to it.  No team has indicated that they knew about this allegation during the draft.  No scouts, no GMs, nobody.  Nobody in the media knew anything about it either.  

 

If you really think the Bills knew that Araiza was credibly connected to a gang rape and drafted him anyway, I think your priors are way off.

7 minutes ago, Sierra Foothills said:

As for the performance of Skurski, Graham, Gaughan and the others who have come under criticism here IMO none of their work crosses the line into sensationalism.

I mean, if the Matt-Araiza-set-somebody-up-for-a-gang-rape story was so well known at the time, where were these guys?  Why do they hate women so much?  Why were they covering for a gang rapist?  Why didn't they break this story wide open themselves?  (The answer is obviously because this wasn't a story at the time, and this whole line of argument is a hack-ish way of getting another byline or two out of it.)

 

 

Edited August 29, 2022 by BillsFanSD

[JoPoy88]

19 minutes ago, BillsFanSD said:

I haven't seen any evidence at all that any NFL teams knew about this allegation or that Araiza was connected to it.  No team has indicated that they knew about this allegation during the draft.  No scouts, no GMs, nobody.  Nobody in the media knew anything about it either.  

 

If you really think the Bills knew that Araiza was credibly connected to a gang rape and drafted him anyway, I think your priors are way off.

I mean, if the Matt-Araiza-set-somebody-up-for-a-gang-rape story was so well known at the time, where were these guys?  Why do they hate women so much?  Why were they covering for a gang rapist?  Why didn't they break this story wide open themselves?  (The answer is obviously because this wasn't a story at the time, and this whole line of argument is a hack-ish way of getting another byline or two out of it.)

 

 

When you say “no one in the media knew about it” I’m assuming you mean NFL media? Because I agree with you there. But the LA Times (also media) have been looking into this for several months at least.

[Shaw66]

2 hours ago, Beck Water said:

 

Now let's be clear here.  Beane said that "we're up into the double-digits (meaning 10 or more) and no one knew about this"

10 is not "most"

10 is not even "the majority"

 

Nor is it "only" 2 teams who said they knew; the AP reporter who broke that said that he contacted 5 teams, 2 knew there was "something" (didn't dig because they didn't plan to draft a punter), 3 didn't know.

 

I posted the probability elsewhere that what were the odds, if "only" 2 teams knew and Beane contacted 10 teams, he missed finding one that knew?  That's 45% assuming it's random (it's probably not random; the AP reporter and Beane probably reached out first to teams where they have the best contacts)

 

 

Even with your numbers, it's hard to say the Bills dropped the ball on this in the pre-draft period.   Yes, it would have been nice had the Bills uncovered more information, but it doesn't sound like it was information that was obvious or the kind of information that teams would usually find.   Would they like to have found the info?  Absolutely.  And will they change their procedures?  I'd bet they will, to increase the likelihood that they find it.  

 

If we try to imagine what teams doing due diligence were seeing, it was something like this:  Araiza is saying nothing about this, at all.  He's embarrassed it happened, and he wants it to go away.  So, he's not talking, even though teams are probably asking if there's anything they need to know about.   His college team isn't talking about it.  They know something happened, but the facts are vague and they decided to take the easy route, which is to wait until something happens - the police give them more info, the woman complains directly to the program, something.   But they aren't seeing or hearing anything more, they decide they're just waiting to see if it goes away.

 

Maybe a few teams had an inside contact - like a scout played for a guy who's coaching at the school, and the scout goes out to dinner with the coach and, because of the nature of the relationship, gets a little more info than would usually turn up, and he finds out that there are rumors.  Maybe the scout asks Araiza what he knows about the rumors, and Araiza tells the guy that he doesn't believe they're true, but he was at the party.  

 

As I said elsewhere, one thing I think will happen is that Beane will ask his people what people should have been contacted, and what questions should have been asked, in order to find out there were rumors.   And those kind of people and those questions will become part of the process.  

 

But as to the original point, it seems like the Bills did the same amount of digging on Araiza as most other teams did.   So, I don't think they dropped the ball.  

[Sierra Foothills]

I used to work in news. I was partly inspired by Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate work and I grew up watching Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.

 

I'm the first to criticize the current state of the news media with their shyt disturbing and prioritizing of clicks, traffic, visitors, and ratings above actual journalism. I hate the lack of objectivity by news outlets that began with the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.

 

That said, in reading this topic many of you have a very limited view on the cost/benefit of the news media and also the job that the Bills beat writers are doing with Araiza-gate.

 

A few of you don't understand what the world would be like if the media didn't exist. Having free media (as opposed to state-run media) asking even stupid questions is better than living in a world where an organization get a free pass because there's zero media scrutiny. Even "bad media" keeps people and organizations honest.

 

Others here think the reporting is biased against the team and that the team is being treated too harshly. It seems like most of these "poor Bills" reactions are homerism (and I'm not referring to the works of Homer). As I stated upstream, objectively the Bills have made some missteps during this controversy. MINIMALLY:

• The Bills either willfully (or not) ignored information that other teams were aware of... that Araiza and the SDSU football team were the subject of a rape investigation.
• The Bills did not maintain contact with the plaintiff's lawyer who reached out to the team to make them aware of the investigation. Plaintiff's lawyer even followed up with the Bills but the club did not respond. The Bills had zero to gain and much to lose (even from a pure optics standpoint) by not staying engaged with the plaintiffs lawyer.

Based on the timing of Araiza's release it's clear the Bills were not standing on principle so much as they were bowing to public pressure.  Bills Head Coach Sean McDermott appeared on Barstool Sports on Tuesday 8/23/22 and said what a "great kid" Araiza was. This was 22 days after the plaintiff's attorney spoke to the Bills attorney and 2 days before the Bills said they had conducted a "thorough investigation. How much was McDermott kept in the dark about what was going on? Isn't this a mishandling of the situation?

 

When the Bills released Araiza they were not standing up for him or for due process nor were they supporting their "culture." Releasing Araiza became necessary and unavoidable (except in the opinions of a few delusional posters here).

 

As for the performance of Skurski, Graham, Gaughan and the others who have come under criticism, I haven't listened to the press conferences so I can't speak to the quality of the questions but I have read their pieces and have no problems with what these guys have written and reported. Also it seems like for context, most of you have not read the Araiza articles that have been published in the major newspapers. The local media is doing just fine with their reporting.

[Shaw66]

1 hour ago, BillsFanSD said:

 

(The answer is obviously because this wasn't a story at the time, and this whole line of argument is a hack-ish way of getting another byline or two out of it.)

 

 

Well, yeah, I'm one who's quick to criticize the press, but the fact is this is as tough a situation for them as for the team.  For one, their editors are telling them THIS is the story, get something on it.  Their editors know more people will read about this story than up the upcoming cuts, so this is the story that they have to report on.  

 

Given that, just like Beane and McDermott are just a GM and a coach, these guys are just second-string sports beat writers, not investigative journalists.   Just like McDermott has never done a press conference like these before, these guys have never dug into this kind of story before, either.   They don't know what questions to ask, what angles to pursue, and what people want to read.  They don't want to piss off the Bills, their editor, their readers.   

 

Point is, it isn't easy for them, either.  

[Beck Water]

3 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

Well, yeah, I'm one who's quick to criticize the press, but the fact is this is as tough a situation for them as for the team.  For one, their editors are telling them THIS is the story, get something on it.  Their editors know more people will read about this story than up the upcoming cuts, so this is the story that they have to report on.  

 

Given that, just like Beane and McDermott are just a GM and a coach, these guys are just second-string sports beat writers, not investigative journalists.   Just like McDermott has never done a press conference like these before, these guys have never dug into this kind of story before, either.   They don't know what questions to ask, what angles to pursue, and what people want to read.  They don't want to piss off the Bills, their editor, their readers.   

 

Point is, it isn't easy for them, either.  

 

I do think you're selling some of our reporters short here calling them "second string sports beat writers"

 

A number of reporters covering the Bills have some serious journalist chops covering controversial sports stories before, and some have broad journalistic experience before settling into the Sports Beat.

 

I agree that all the Bills beat reporters are under intense pressure to produce stories and soundbites on the Araiza situation

 

Edited August 29, 2022 by Beck Water

[Shaw66]

5 minutes ago, Sierra Foothills said:

I used to work in news. I was partly inspired by Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate work and I grew up watching Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.

 

I'm the first to criticize the current state of the news media with their shyt disturbing and prioritizing of clicks, traffic, visitors, and ratings above actual journalism. I hate the lack of objectivity by news outlets that began with the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.

 

That said, in reading this topic many of you have a very limited view on the cost/benefit of the news media and also the job that the Bills beat writers are doing with Araiza-gate.

 

A few of you don't understand what the world would be like if the media didn't exist. Having free media (as opposed to state-run media) asking even stupid questions is better than living in a world where an organization get a free pass because there's zero media scrutiny. Even "bad media" keeps people and organizations honest.

 

Others here think the reporting is biased against the team and that the team is being treated too harshly. It seems like most of these "poor Bills" reactions are homerism (and I'm not referring to the works of Homer). As I stated upstream, objectively the Bills have made some missteps during this controversy. MINIMALLY:

• The Bills either willfully (or not) ignored information that other teams were aware of... that Araiza and the SDSU football team were the subject of a rape investigation.
• The Bills did not maintain contact with the plaintiff's lawyer who reached out to the team to make them aware of the investigation. Plaintiff's lawyer even followed up with the Bills but the club did not respond. The Bills had zero to gain and much to lose (even from a pure optics standpoint) by not staying engaged with the plaintiffs lawyer.

Based on the timing of Araiza's release it's clear the Bills were not standing on principle so much as they were bowing to public pressure.  Bills Head Coach Sean McDermott appeared on Barstool Sports on Tuesday 8/23/22 and said what a "great kid" Araiza was. This was 22 days after the plaintiff's attorney spoke to the Bills attorney and 2 days before the Bills said they had conducted a "thorough investigation. How much was McDermott kept in the dark about what was going on? Isn't this a mishandling of the situation?

 

When the Bills released Araiza they were not standing up for him or for due process nor were they supporting their "culture." Releasing Araiza became necessary and unavoidable (except in the opinions of a few delusional posters here).

 

As for the performance of Skurski, Graham, Gaughan and the others who have come under criticism, I haven't listened to the press conferences so I can't speak to the quality of the questions but I have read their pieces and have no problems with what these guys have written and reported. Also it seems like for context, most of you have not read the Araiza articles that have been published in the major newspapers. The local media is doing just fine with their reporting.

This is really good.  Thanks for taking the time to put it together.  

 

I do have some quibbles.  By putting "or not" in parentheses, you're suggesting that it probably was willful.   There is no evidence that they willfully ignored any information, and that's exactly contrary to what Beane has said.   They did not know anything about this before the end of July, at which point they didn't ignore it.  

 

Yes, they could have had more regular contact with plaintiff's counsel, but what was that supposed to be?  A phone call asking if there was more information?   I agree, that would be a good thing to do, but in this case (and most) it would not have turned up anything new.   There wasn't any reason to believe that this long after the event, new information would arise.  But if that's the best criticism you can come up with, then I'd say the Bills did a pretty good job.  

 

I agree completely that cutting Araiza was the expedient and correct thing to do.  It will end the media circus.  And I agree that it wasn't done, as Beane said, because it was the best thing for Araiza.  It wasn't.  But it was done for culture.  There had to be players (or wives) who were troubled by the allegations and who were troubled to have deal with having the guy as a teammate.  McDermott is promising these guys an ideal environment in which to become better football players, and having that kind of distraction goin on is not conducive to an ideal environment.  So, culture was one of the reasons they did what they did. 

[Sierra Foothills]

1 hour ago, BillsFanSD said:

1) I haven't seen any evidence at all that any NFL teams knew about this allegation or that Araiza was connected to it.  No team has indicated that they knew about this allegation during the draft.  No scouts, no GMs, nobody.  Nobody in the media knew anything about it either.  

 

2) If you really think the Bills knew that Araiza was credibly connected to a gang rape and drafted him anyway, I think your priors are way off.

3) I mean, if the Matt-Araiza-set-somebody-up-for-a-gang-rape story was so well known at the time, where were these guys?  Why do they hate women so much?  Why were they covering for a gang rapist?  Why didn't they break this story wide open themselves?  (The answer is obviously because this wasn't a story at the time, and this whole line of argument is a hack-ish way of getting another byline or two out of it.)

 

 

 

To your first point (numbered above), it was reported in the Associated Press that there were teams that were aware of the Araiza situation pre-draft. The AP is a very credible news organization not least of all because they are a not-for-profit. 

 

Are you not aware of their reports or do you choose to ignore them?

 

To your second point, I don't believe the Bills knew about the rape story pre-draft but other teams did know, thus the Bills fell short in this regard. It is binary, they either passed or failed. They failed. Is this too difficult to understand?

 

To your third point, Do you believe it's the job of a Bills beat reporter to scour for theoretical news surrounding the San Diego State Football program? If Microsoft hires an executive is it a newspapers job to vet him?

Edited August 29, 2022 by Sierra Foothills

[Shaw66]

8 minutes ago, Beck Water said:

 

I do think you're selling some of our reporters short here calling them "second string sports beat writers"

 

A number of reporters covering the Bills have some serious journalist chops covering controversial sports stories before, and some have broad journalistic experience before settling into the Sports Beat.

 

I agree that all the Bills beat reporters are under intense pressure to produce stories and soundbites on the Araiza situation

 

Well, fair enough, but having made a career of covering the Bills for the Buffalo market is the same as having made a career of covering western New York news on local TV.   There's a reason they aren't covering the Patriots or the Giants or the Rams, just like the Buffalo TV news people aren't on the NBC nightly news.  That's because the Globe and the Times and the Times (the other one) and NBC can afford to hire the best, and they aren't hiring the Buffalo beat writers.   They are in the relative minor leagues for a reason.  That doesn't mean they aren't good writers, smart people, good journalists, but it does definitely mean they're second string.  

1 minute ago, Sierra Foothills said:

 

To your second point, I don't believe the Bills knew about the rape story pre-draft but other teams did know, thus the Bills fell short in this regard. It is binary, they either passed or failed. They failed. Is this too difficult to understand?

 

Either they did it or they didn't.  That's what's binary.   That doesn't make it pass-fail.   If the number is two teams knew and 30 didn't (I know, we don't know that, but if that's what it is), then I don't think the Bills failed.   They did what more or less everyone else did, which means they did what's standard.  The fact that two teams figured it out may set a new standard for investigating the draft class, but it doesn't mean everyone else failed.  

 

Minor point.  I don't disagree with what you're saying.