The NFL Players Association believes that, for a variety of reasons, Commissioner Roger Goodell isn’t the best person to be handling the appeals of discipline imposed on players by Goodell or the executives who report to him. Here’s one more reason to which the NFLPA possibly could now point.
The NFLPA could argue that Goodell doesn’t follow the rules that apply to the appeals.
On Tuesday, Goodell said that “[t]here is no deadline” for a ruling on the appeal of Tom Brady’s four-game suspension. While the Collective Bargaining Agreement may not identify a specific number of days within which a decision must be made on appeals of this nature, Article 46, Section 2(d) requires that a decision be issued “[a]s soon as practicable” after the hearing ends.
“Practicable” means, according to the folks at Merriam-Webster.com, means “capable of being put into practice or of being done or accomplished.” Which makes “as soon as practicable” a fancy lawyer way of saying “as soon as possible.”
So there is a deadline. The deadline is, “Get it done as soon as you can.”
Currently, 29 days have passed since the Brady hearing, and nearly three weeks have transpired since the NFL and NFLPA submitted written briefs regarding their positions, based on the things said at the hearing.
“We want to make sure we have a fair and open process,” Goodell added on Tuesday.
But the process has concluded. The hearing had ended. And no one seriously believes that Goodell is poring over the transcript with a fully-open mind, bracing for a potential “Eureka!” moment that causes a 180-degree change in his thinking.
His mind undoubtedly was made up before the hearing. It’s highly unlikely that anything that happened during the hearing made a difference. For now, the goal is for the league’s lawyers to craft a written ruling that Goodell will sign — and that will be able to withstand the scrutiny of a federal judge.
The delay also could be aimed at getting Brady to accept a deal. If, for example, Goodell plans to reduce the suspension to two games, either because that was the plan all along or because that was the wink-nod arrangement when the Patriots dropped their own appeal rights, it’s better to drop the suspension to two games in exchange for an agreement from Brady to drop his right to take the matter to court, ending the matter now.
Regardless, this all should have been done long before today. The league needed only five days after the issuance of the 243-page Ted Wells report to drop the hammer on Brady in May. A full month isn’t needed for Goodell to review the decision he previously approved.