The Patriots didn't go nuclear Wednesday, but they definitely lobbed an Al Davis Memorial Grenade at Roger Goodell and the NFL front office with the Amicus Curiae brief they filed with the Second Circuit in support of Tom Brady and the NFLPA.
Either the elder Kraft has finally had enough, or his son Jonathan locked him in a closet and temporarily took control of his team. Either way, the Patriots have declared war and it's freaking tremendous.
Here's my favorite part of the main text of the brief:
The paucity of evidence against Mr. Brady magnifies the unfairness of refusing the requested discovery. As the Myths Article (see fn. 6, supra) points out, there is no direct evidence of either Mr. Brady’s knowledge of or involvement in any tampering or of any such tampering, and the circumstantial evidence relied upon does not support either conclusion. After months of investigation and scores of witness interviews, the most that Paul Weiss could conclude was that Mr. Brady was probably “generally aware” of a violation by others. JA97. That standard for imposing a penalty was challenged in the appeal to the Commissioner. No additional evidence of Mr. Brady’s knowledge or involvement was presented at his appeal hearing. The Commissioner, to move beyond the “general awareness” finding, asserted that Mr. Brady was not credible when he testified that he and Mr. Jastremski only discussed the preparation of footballs for the Super Bowl in their communications in the days following the AFC Championship Game. SPA50. That finding was made before it was known the transcripts of the hearing would be made public. The transcripts, later ordered to be made public, reveal that the Commissioner misstated the evidence and that, in fact, Mr. Brady testified he and Mr. Jastremski spoke about both the preparation of footballs for the upcoming Super Bowl and about the PSI story that was garnering media attention.
But the best parts were in the footnotes, where the Patriots lawyers absolutely decimated the NFL and their legal team:
This misstatement of Mr. Brady’s testimony about the content of the Brady-Jastremski communications was repeated at oral argument in this Court by League counsel. That misstatement, unfortunately, continued the pattern of misstatements in the NFL’s brief to this Court about the record in this case. For example, to address the refusal to provide discovery of interview notes, the NFL’s brief asserted that Mr. Brady’s counsel was present at numerous of the Paul Weiss interviews. In fact, they were present at only Mr. Brady’s interview. See JA123. The NFL’s brief further stated that the term “deflator” was used in Jastremski-McNally texts before and throughout the 2014 season; in fact, the term appears in only one of thousands of texts, a text that occurred four months before the season in a string of texts having nothing to do with the preparation of footballs. JA170. The NFL’s brief also totally mischaracterized the content of other texts, asserting, for example, that they contained demands by Mr. McNally that Mr. Brady provide him with financial or other benefits; in fact, not a single text stated that. All these mischaracterizations were designed to make the evidence against Mr. Brady seem far stronger than it was. The actual texts at issue are set forth in detail in the Wells Report, so this Court need not rely on their mischaracterizations in the NFL’s brief.
...and my favorite part, from footnote 2:
From the outset of this matter the League’s conduct reflects less a search for the truth than pursuit of a pre-determined result and defense of a report which, despite no direct evidence of tampering or Mr. Brady’s involvement, was relied on to impose penalties with no precedent or correlation to the alleged offense. The League’s commitment to the conclusions of the Wells Report on which the penalties were based was so absolute that in Mr. Brady’s appeal one of the chief Paul Weiss investigators and an author of the Report, Mr. Reisner, served as the League’s counsel and examined witnesses. JA 974-986, 998-1006, 1052-1056, 1059-1061, 1065. In addition, at the very outset of the investigation the League leaked materially incorrect PSI information and refused to correct it for months, allowing public misperceptions to fester. At the AFC Championship Game itself, and despite having no knowledge of the impact of weather on PSI (as admitted under oath, JA1007 at 231:6), League personnel were already accusing the Patriots of cheating. The League made a “preliminary finding” of wrongdoing by Patriots’ employees less than 24 hours after the Game. JA1195. Penalties were imposed only three business days after receipt of the 139 page Wells Report and the 82 page Exponent Report and obviously without any critical assessment of either. The Commissioner publicly praised the Wells Report, imposed penalties based on it, and then insisted on hearing and deciding Mr. Brady’s appeal himself despite the authority to appoint an independent person to do so. When evidence at that hearing did not provide support for enhanced findings against Mr. Brady (to go beyond “general awareness” of violations by others), the Commissioner made new findings and changed the basis on which Mr. Brady was being penalized.In summary, the Patriots called bullshit on the NFL's ridiculous investigation and flat out called the Commissioner of the NFL and his lawyers a bunch of damn liars.
It's brilliant, really.
For a fan base that's been extremely frustrated by the team's lack of willingness to fight for their quarterback, this is a welcome change of tone. With the exception of a passive aggressive website based attack on the validity of the Wells Report, the Patriots have mostly stayed on the sidelines throughout the DeflateGate legal battle. It's about time they jumped to the defense of their quarterback and spoke up for their angry fans.
Like the headline says, this thing is porn for Patriots fans.
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