Tom Brady suspended four games for Deflategate role

Tom Gatto

Tom Brady suspended four games for Deflategate role image

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has been suspended without pay for the first four games of the NFL season for his role in Deflategate, the league announced Monday.

In addition, the Patriots were fined $1 million and had their first-round pick in the 2016 NFL Draft and a fourth-round pick in the 2017 draft taken away.

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Brady will be able to participate in all offseason, training camp and preseason activities, including exhibition games. He won't be eligible to play regular-season games until the Week 6, Oct. 18 game at the Colts. The Patriots have a bye in Week 4.

The league said it punished Brady and the Patriots for their "violation of the playing rules and the failure to cooperate in the subsequent investigation."

Patriots equipment staff employees John Jastremski and James McNally were indefinitely suspended without pay by the club, effective May 6.

“We reached these decisions after extensive discussion with (vice president of football operations) Troy Vincent and many others,” Goodell said in a statement. “We relied on the critical importance of protecting the integrity of the game and the thoroughness and independence of the Wells report.”

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From a football perspective, the punishment affects the AFC East race. The Patriots' backup quarterback is second-year player Jimmy Garoppolo, who has  thrown 27 NFL regular-season passes. The last time a team other than Patriots won the AFC East was 2008, when the Dolphins won the division in a year Brady was injured in the first regular-season game and missed the rest of the year.

Off the field, the controversy headed toward a conclusion — pending an appeal — when independent investigator Ted Wells' report, released last week, found that it was "more probable than not" that Brady "was at least generally aware" footballs were purposely deflated before the AFC Championship Game against the Colts. The Patriots, who won the game, 45-7, disputed the findings.

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What was left to be determined was what punishment Brady and the Patriots might face from Vincent, although that missing piece hardly kept the controversy from continuing to drive a national conversation among the media, NFL teams, current and former players and, of course, comedians.

“In determining that a violation occurred, we applied the standard of proof stated in the Integrity of the Game Policy: namely, preponderance of the evidence, meaning that ‘as a whole, the fact sought to be proved is more probable than not,'" Vincent said in a statement. "This is a well-recognized legal standard, which is applied in courts and workplaces every day throughout the country. The evidence gathered during the investigation and reviewed in the report more than satisfy this standard and demonstrate an ongoing plan by at least certain Patriots’ employees to deflate footballs, to do so in a secretive manner after the game officials have certified the footballs as suitable for play, and to hide these activities even from their own supervisors."

Brady's agent, Don Yee, said Brady will appeal the ruling. Yee called the suspension "ridiculous" and said a hearing before an independent third party will expose the Wells Report as "an incredibly frail exercise in fact-finding and logic." He also claimed the NFL "participated with the Colts in some type of pre-AFC Championship Game planning regarding the footballs."

"The NFL has a well-documented history of making poor disciplinary decisions that often are overturned when truly independent and neutral judges or arbitrators preside, and a former federal judge has found the commissioner has abused his discretion in the past, so this outcome does not surprise me," Yee said in a statement (via ESPN's Adam Schefter). "Sadly, today’s decision diminishes the NFL as it tells its fans, players and coaches that the games on the field don’t count as much as the games played on Park Avenue."

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Patriots owner Robert Kraft, in a separate statement, also blasted the league.

"Despite our conviction that there was no tampering with footballs, it was our intention to accept any discipline levied by the league. Today’s punishment, however, far exceeded any reasonable expectation. It was based completely on circumstantial rather than hard or conclusive evidence," Kraft said.

Kraft also said Brady has the organization's "unconditional support."

"Our belief in him has not wavered," Kraft said.

Over the weekend, ​NFL spokesman Greg Aiello, in an email to Boston.com, said that the league had yet to reach a decision on a punishment for Brady's role in the alleged incident, and that a headline in Saturday's New York Daily News — "Tom Brady will be suspended by Roger Goodell for role in Deflategate, announcement expected next week" — was wrong.

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At the same time, as Brady was speaking only briefly while others were defending him or completely dodging Deflategate, the issue continued to percolate.

Legendary Dolphins coach Don Shula, serving as a guest of honor at the team's 50th season celebration, reminded the crowd that he became the winningest coach in NFL history without gaining any illegal advantages.

"Our record in those 50 years was always done with a lot of class, a lot of dignity, a lot of doing it the right way," Shula said in his speech, via ESPN.com. "We didn't deflate any balls."

Even before Wells' report, as far back as January, Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana placed the blame solely on Brady. Whether Monday's announcement will tarnish Brady's legacy can't be known at this point, but clearly he was affected by not cooperating in the Deflategate controversy.

According to Pro Football Talk, his refusal to fully cooperate with Wells' investigation meant that, under the NFL’s Policy on Integrity of the Game & Enforcement of Competitive Rules, he had engaged in conduct detrimental to the league. The rule states, “Failure to cooperate in an investigation shall be considered conduct detrimental to the League and will subject the offending club and responsible individual(s) to appropriate discipline.”

In terms of punishment, longtime CBS newsman Bob Schieffer, a big baseball fan, couldn't help but reminisce Sunday on "Face the Nation" about how cheating was an everyday part of that game and once caught, players' actions would be dealt with in the midst of the game. His solution to make sure Deflategate never happens again seems so obvious, it's a wonder the NFL hasn't adopted it already:

The results of Wells' investigation and subsequent punishment could be seen as damning to an organization that is not nearly far enough removed from Spygate to find itself in the web of another cheating scandal.

While the gains associated with a deflated football are debatable and have been disputed by some of the game's legends since the Colts pointed a finger at the Patriots, the optics of such a strategy — whether broad-based or narrow in focus — are damaging.

Perform Media's Ron Clements and Bob Hille contributed to this report.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.