Hey, Roger, can we get on with this already?
Now what?
Yeah, we figured to get something last week. Everybody figured to hear something from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell last week, finally announcing his ruling on whether or not he was going to overturn or reduce Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s four-game suspension stemming from Deflategate and the Wells Report.
After all, what better time to maximize the news cycle than to make the announcement smack-dab in the middle of what is traditionally the quietest sports week on the calendar?
We forgot one thing though; The NFL bows to nobody.
Did it really matter that Major League Baseball was on its All-Star break last week? The NFL can and will squeeze exposure from whatever topic Goodell deems fit, ESPYs be damned. What does he care that that there’s an open date on the docket?
As far as the NFL is concerned, they’re all open.
And so, only nine days shy of the Patriots opening training camp in Foxborough, we’re left with a palpable uncertainty surrounding the defending Super Bowl MVP. If Goodell does the unthinkable and wipes Brady’s suspension clean, the Deflategate saga — now at 183 days and counting — is, once and for all, mercifully, over. Besides living on in the late-night TV jokes, and Marshall Faulk’s commentary on NFL Network, of course.
If Goodell neglects to alter the penalty, or even if he merely reduces Brady’s punishment to one or two games, the NFLPA intends to take the league to court over the matter. In which case, Deflategate would drag on toward a conclusion with a plodding effort that even Michael Bay would scoff at.
The paths lie in the hands of the most powerful commissioner in American sports. The man will let you know whenever he damned well pleases.
The threat of a lawsuit from the NFLPA last week might have been an indication that the two sides are talking in order to come to some sort of arrangement where Brady is concerned. As of now, Brady is only due to come back for Game 5, vs. the Indianapolis Colts in a Sunday night national broadcast on NBC. You can’t write a ratings script better than that.
Which makes us wonder if the NFL wrote that very ratings script.
“I do think they’re negotiating,’’ Jodi Balsam, an associate professor and director at the Brooklyn Law School who also served as the league’s counsel for operations and litigation from 1994 to 2002 told USA TODAY. “They may be back-channel conversations, but what the NFL wants is to get an implicit agreement from Brady’s people that a reduction in the number of suspended games would resolve the issue and put the brakes on any further litigation.’’
In other words, if the NFLPA sticks to its word, this ordeal is most likely headed for a lawsuit one way or another.
A birdie told ProFootballTalk to expect the verdict this week, which flies from the flock that kept everybody on alert last week. ESPN’s Adam Scheffer suggested last week on WEEI that the ruling may not eke out of league offices until the end of the month. Hell, why not just announce the thing on Aug. 3 to temper the normally-boisterous birthday greetings from Brady’s well-wishers at Gillette Stadium training camp?
The NFL has sort of wedged itself into a no-win situation here. If the player’s association takes it to court, it risks having its incompetent disciplinary process, once again, dragged through the legal system, with the league’s No. 1 attraction at the center of the charade, nonetheless. Then again, if it strips Brady of any wrongdoing, content to collect Patriots owner Bob Kraft’s genuflecting surrender to Goodell as punishment enough, it risks alienating the occupants of the 31 other owners’ boxes.
So, what could both parties realistically live with?
One game? Fine. Right?
One game and the banner though? It sounds just as ludicrous now as it did when Lord Goodell announced the suspension in the first place.
We’re just shy of eight weeks until the season opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers, when the Patriots will raise their 2014 Super Bowl championship banner from the rafters — er, ramps — at Gillette. To put that time into some perspective, it’s been eight weeks since Memorial Day, which means the potato salad creeping up the back wall of your refrigerator has to go.
It’s safe to assume that Brady and the Patriots will know his fate by then, right?
Don’t bother targeting the next, possible date that makes sense for the NFL to take the world hostage with ruling on the Brady appeal. Predicting when the next shoe will drop is folly on par with guessing what the final punishment will be in the first place.
Whenever. Whatever. However Goodell pleases.
He can’t win, but nor can he retreat, setting up a fascinating endgame, albeit one that we’ve tired of greatly.
Any day now, though. Any day.
Patriots 2015 schedule
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