The NFL and NFL Players Association have made final submissions to Judge Richard M. Berman in support of their respective positions regarding the Tom Brady suspension. And the NFLPA’s brief goes for the proverbial jugular.
After 14 pages of reiterating and expanding upon the primary arguments made to overturn the suspension (i.e., that Brady could be fined only for equipment violations, that no player can be suspended for obstructing an NFL investigation, that the proceedings were fundamentally unfair, and that the arbitrator — Commissioner Roger Goodell — was “evidently partial”), the NFLPA lists five bullet points supporting its position that the final decision “is more smear campaign than reasoned decision,” that is it “a propaganda piece written for public consumption, at a time when the NFL believed the transcript would be sealed for public view,” and that Goodell hoped “to validate a multi-million-dollar ‘independent’ investigation.”
The specific bullet points are as follows:
First, “Goodell leads the Award with a ‘gothca!’ discussion about Brady purportedly destroying his phone, never acknowledging that Brady had turned over all of his emails and all of his phone bills (which demonstrated that [Ted] Wells already had all relevant text communications from other sources) or mentioning it was Brady’s career-long practice to recycle his phones because of Brady’s privacy concerns.”
Second, “Goodell found that Brady’s increased communications with [John] Jastremki after the AFC Championship game ‘undermine[d] any suggestion that the communications addressed only preparation of footballs for the Super Bowl rather than the tampering allegations’ . . . when Brady actually testified — at length — that he did discuss the tampering allegations with Jastremski because he was concerned they were causing Jastremski considerable stress and wanted to know what had happened.” (Emphasis in NFLPA brief.)
Third, “Goodell wrote that the NFLPA’s expert, Dean Snyder, ‘performed no independent analysis or experiments’ . . . when Snyder testified for two hours about the statistical, regression, and other analyses that his team conducted.”
Fourth, “Goodell wrote in the Award . . . that Brady testified ‘that the Patriots’ equipment personnel would not do anything to game balls that was inconsistent with what he wanted’ when Brady actually testified that this is why he ‘do[es]n’t think anyone would tamper with the ball.”
Fifth, “Goodell radically changed Wells’ finding of ‘general awareness’ of purported ball deflation by others into a conspiratorial ‘scheme’ when the hearing record contains not a shred of evidence about any such ‘scheme’ that Goodell could cite.”
The parties are due in court on Wednesday for a settlement conference and further argument on whether the suspension should be upheld or overturned. It remains possible that Judge Berman will send the case back for a new appeal hearing, possibly with a new arbitrator.