NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell upheld the original four-game suspension he gave Patriots quarterback Tom Brady following the report his office commissioned all but condemned him as the criminal mastermind behind a batch of underinflated footballs. That's that, right?
Not so fast.
Brady, armed with the battery of attorneys that come with membership in the Players' Association, is expected to take the NFL to court on account of what they will call a corrupt and unfair procedure. Goodell, they'll say, posed himself as judge and jury in a case he himself brought against the four-time Super Bowl champion.
The NFL, meanwhile, is confident of any result that would come from a court date. That very procedure the union will condemn as a kangaroo court was agreed to by all parties concerned in the recent collective bargaining agreement. The case for Brady's innocence had been largely undecided from an objective point of view. Those who despise the Patriots, including their scores of gridiron victims, were adamant that the matinee idol was a cheater. Those, on the other hand, whose ZIP code begins with "0" were convinced of his innocence.
The answer to that question may have been tilted heavily to one side, the side the gentle, Puritan folk of New England would prefer not to believe. In his ruling, Goodell revealed that Brady destroyed his phone around the time of the investigation. Why would an innocent man obliterate his own phone?
The alibi: Tom Brady destroys his phone every four years. After all, who doesn't do that?
Well, no one -- except people with many things to hide from inquisitive enemies.
Tom Brady took nearly every snap for the Patriots last season, and likes to take nearly every one of them in training camp. With his absence now a distinct possibility, that could change.
Though Brady is allowed to participate in preseason activities, Jimmy Garoppolo will have to be a sharp as possible if he's starting against the Steelers on Sept. 10, and that means he'll have to take most of the reps. Those 27 career pass attempts of his won't be enough to get by when Pittsburgh comes to town.
Will it come to that?
Should Brady and his counsel elect an injunction, and it were received, the Patriots would have to decide between a fast track court case or allow it to play out naturally, possibly allowing Brady to start Week 1 without the case being decided.
The danger of the former path is profound. If Brady starts Week 1 and is decided against by a judge, that four game absence could come at the worst time for New England -- when they likely would be in a postseason race or in the postseason itself.
Brady will do anything within his power to clear his name and reputation, particularly after that new revelation concerning those bits and pieces of phone scattered all over Massachusetts.
That said, it's very hard for a court to grant an injunction, particularly in the case of overturning a decision internal to an organization that its members have contractually agreed to, as the NFLPA and the league did with the procedure Goodell used to suspend Brady.
Not to mention that Patriots owner Robert Kraft willingly (if grudgingly) surrendered to the $1 million fine and two draft picks the NFL took from them as part of the original ruling.
That, combined with the entirely consensual means of adjudicating the case, would give a federal judge little reason to side with Brady.
Which makes Jimmy Garoppolo the quarterback of the New England Patriots.
@MrJamesParks
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