FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady appealed his four-game suspension for his role in using deflated footballs during the AFC championship game, and the players’ union urged commissioner Roger Goodell to appoint a neutral arbitrator to hear the case.
The expected appeal was filed by the NFL Players Association on Thursday about an hour before the deadline. The league’s collective bargaining agreement stipulates that it will be decided by Goodell or a person he designates.
“Given the NFL’s history of inconsistency and arbitrary decisions in disciplinary matters, it is only fair that a neutral arbitrator hear this appeal,” the union said in a press release.
The union did not detail specifics of the appeal.
The NFL announced the quarterback’s suspension on Monday, also fining the Patriots $1 million and taking away two draft picks.
Brady’s appeal only deals with the suspension and must be heard within 10 days. The team has not said if it will appeal its penalties before a deadline May 21. The lost draft picks include a first-round draft pick next year and a fourth-rounder in 2017.
League-appointed investigator Ted Wells found that Brady was “at least generally aware” of plans by two team employees to prepare the balls to his liking, below the league-mandated minimum of 12.5 pounds per square inch.
In a nearly 20,000-word rebuttal to the league’s findings published on Thursday, a Patriots lawyer disputed the conclusions on matters of science, logic and law.
Team attorney Daniel Goldberg said the “deflator” nickname used by a ballboy and cited in the discipline was about weight loss, not footballs.
The two employees used the term jokingly to refer to locker room attendant Jim McNally, who was trying to lose weight, Goldberg said.
Goldberg represented the team and was present during all of interviews of team personnel. Patriots spokesman Stacey James confirmed that the site wellsreportcontext.com was genuine and “approved/supported by the team.”
Goldberg’s response claims the league’s conclusions are “at best, incomplete, incorrect and lack context.”
It denied a link between Brady and the two equipment staffers, and it rejected Wells’ claims that the team was not cooperative in the investigation. Wells said the team refused to make McNally available for a follow-up interview; Goldberg said the league should have asked all of its questions the first time.
Among the claims in the response were that Wells ignored an innocuous scientific explanation for the loss of air pressure in the footballs used in the AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.
The rebuttal also includes claims of other incidents of ball-tampering that were not dealt with as harshly. And it says increased communication between Brady and the ballboys after the scandal broke were just normal expressions of concern, rather than evidence of the quarterback’s guilt.
In Brady’s appeal, the league will go against an experienced foe in labor lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, who has won other appeals against the league and is helping the quarterback.
If the suspension is upheld, Brady would miss the first four games of the regular season and be eligible to return against the Colts on Oct. 18.
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