Tom Brady and the NFL Players Association received unfortunate news on Thursday when a Minnesota judge rejected their case and sent it to New York, but that does not mean the war is lost for the New England Patriots quarterback.
As the details of the NFLPA’s lawsuit against the league filter out, it has become clear that Brady’s representatives will spend less time trying to prove his innocence and more time obliterating the process. One major sticking point will be the lack of precedent, as no player has ever been punished this severely for violating a game rule or failing to fully cooperate with an investigation.
In 2012, Roger Goodell appointed former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue as an independent arbiter when several New Orleans Saints players appealed their Bountygate suspensions. Tagliabue ended up exonerating all of the players, and one of the things he noted was that no player has ever been suspended for failing to cooperate with an investigation.
“In my forty years of association with the NFL, I am aware of many instances of denials in disciplinary proceedings that proved to be false, but I cannot recall any suspension for such fabrication,” Tagliabue wrote in his ruling, via Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. “This is no evidence of a record of past suspensions based purely on obstructing a League investigation.”
That should obviously bode well for Brady in court.
Florio also notes that the NFLPA is arguing that Ted Wells never informed Brady that he could be suspended if he did not produce his cell phone or electronic communications. Brady testified during his appeal hearing that he would have made his private text messages and emails available had he known the potential consequences, which may be why he offered up records of 10,000 text messages after the fact and encouraged NFL investigators to look into them.
While some of the things Brady has said about destroying or breaking his cell phone sound shady, he should stand a better chance in front of a neutral judge than he did in front of Goodell.
