The NFL on Tuesday announced that Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for his alleged role in Deflategate has been upheld, and the main reason for that was Brady’s decision to destroy his cell phone before Ted Wells and his investigators could gather information from it.
In its 20-page ruling, the NFL wrote that Brady explained it is ordinary practice for him to destroy a cell phone or ask his assistant to destroy it as soon as he gets a new phone. But the league found that Brady began using a new phone on or after March 6 — the day he was interviewed by Wells and company. That’s not a good look.
And it gets worse.
The NFL also determined that the phone Brady used prior to the one he destroyed on or near March 6 had never been destroyed. In fact, it was made available to investigators.
“This conflicts with the fact that the cellphone that he used prior to November 6, 2014, was, in fact, available for Mr. Maryman’s review. Had Mr. Brady followed what he and his attorneys called his ‘ordinary practice,’ one would expect that the cellphone that he had used prior to November 6, 2014, would have been destroyed long before Mr. Maryman was hired. No explanation was provided for this anomaly.”
Again, those sound like the actions and explanations of a guilty man.
Brady is now set to take the case to federal court, and he has a chance of winning based on the fact that there is no precedent. The NFL says in its rule book that the penalty for tampering with game balls starts at a base fine of $50,000. Brett Favre was also only fined when he refused to turn over his phone during the investigation of this sexting scandal, though that had nothing to do with the integrity of the game.
It’s hard to imagine how Brady’s side is going to spin this from a PR standpoint.
