Patriots Enter New League Year Crippled By Cap-Stressed Exodus

Previously published on out sister blog, Mainely Patriots

23 March 2020

2:47am, Lewiston Maine

A heavy drizzle and sporadic fog blankets the ghost town tonight, gloom on top of gloom as the world deals with a naturally-occurring biological attack and the residents have all but hunkered down for what might be a lot longer than the two weeks that the talking heads initially preached.

I just got back from a drive in the weather, a brief but needed respite in the middle of bad craziness. Other than a small crowd gathered in a vacant lot on the corner of Bartlett and Walnut, who appeared to be drinking heavily and doing that vampire dance from The Lost Boys, the streets were bare...

...except for a few persistent, desperate-looking hookers who are discovering the hard way that there's not much job security in times like these when people know that sex could lead to death.

It's a life-altering event for every soul on the planet, and everything has changed. Everything, that is, except the well-meaning loons that run the National Football League, whose decision to open their free agency period as scheduled has proven to be a powerful respite from the nasty little bugs floating around right outside my window. Business as usual, says the league, and all while observing the social distancing mandate from the CDC.

Of course, the fact that New England's favorite son has defected for the warm climes of Florida has many football fans in the region feeling like they've been kicked in the gut while they were already down - but Tom Brady's departure and the media attention it's getting is masking the real story, that being their defense is being stripped down to bare bones, with only the essential core players remaining.

NFL Network rubs it in by showing every single Super Bowl appearance by Brady in their entirety, all while scrolling his name constantly across the bottom of the screen. It's nothing personal. Just the biggest news story during a period when it is needed most, even if the distraction is for a few seconds of anger, it's worth it. It was inevitable, Brady leaving. In fact, in my estimation, it came three years too late.

But that is for another time, very soon, but not now because it doesn't matter anymore. With Brady hogging the headlines, the story of how head coach Bill Belichick is going to have to build his 2020 incarnation of the Patriots has been overlooked. The roster has been stripped of so many core players that the offseason philosophy has been reduced to that of what almost all other teams have endured during the past two decades.

Because during that span, the Patriots haven't had to make wholesale personnel moves in so many different positions as they are faced with this season, what with both of their Pro Bowl quality outside linebackers and their Big Nickel safety gone to other teams.

In fact, the Patriots have lost so many impact players in the initial phases of free agency that it reminds me of a quote by the late, great Hunter S. Thompson, who once documented a trip to a doctor years back about excessive sweating, but when he told the doctor about his normal intake of illicit drugs and alcohol, the doctor responded by telling Thompson that they would wait for him to break down, then work with what was left.

That's what Belichick is faced with: Working with what's left and trying to add some pieces to at least be competitive - and maybe that's what Belichick really wanted to do in the first place. Maybe he wants to get away from the eternal chatter about how his success was not only tied to the head start he inherited from previous Patriots' coaches, but also the questions surrounding whether that success was tied in large part to Brady.

But it's not good enough to just go forward with a new quarterback surrounded by the same supporting cast, Belichick wants to build his team from the ground up. If he is successful and the Patriots somehow make the playoffs, maybe that would add to his already cemented in stone legacy.

Is that important? You bet, considering that, with six Super Bowl titles under their belts making him them winningest head coach and quarterback combination in football history, each has an opportunity to break away from the generation-old question as to whether the Patriots' dynasty was the result of Belichick's coaching or Brady's play. Really, it's a combination of both, but now that Brady is with another team with a chance to make that argument go in his favor.

It's a dumb argument, but when gearing down to the end of two certain Hall-of-Fame careers, neither man want's the question to go unanswered.

Brady will have the easier route to success, going to a Tampa Bay team that is loaded on offense and with an improving defense, while Belichick has to build off a core roster that is the most aged in the league and has lost several key players.

That is not a recipe for success, at least not short-term, but defying the odds with innovative game plans is exactly what Belichick does, and exactly the challenge he wants. Brady wanted elite weapons to throw to, and that's exactly what Tampa provides him.

There are some that felt like Belichick was limiting Brady last season by surrounding him with rookies and cast-offs, and maybe he was. He certainly did very little to replace retired tight end Rob Gronkowski, while letting proven talent at receiver leave in free agency. He did bring in Antonio Brown to catch passes from Brady, but the troubled Brown lasted only two weeks in Foxborough before being released.

Still, Brady was certainly good enough to win with the cast that he had, but injuries along the offensive line doomed the offense. That wasn't Belichick's doing, but it made Brady look ordinary and even below par - and it didn't help that Brady bitched and bristled about the anemic offense and essentially shut down the passing game by hesitating to throw to the aforementioned rookies and cast-offs.

So Brady whined and Belichick became even more tight-lipped than ever, and all the while team owner Bob Kraft, already hiding from the media due to being implicated in a massage parlor sting, said nothing. Certainly there were private conversations between all parties and all had plenty to say - but we'll never know the level of animosity.

In the interim, fans and media around the country are looking for someone to blame for Brady packing up and leaving Foxborough.

Some blame Belichick for not appeasing Brady with weapons. Some blame Brady for his publicly negative attitude and dour expressions. But the real culprit is Kraft, who considers Brady as one of his kids, and refused to allow Belichick to trade Brady three years ago and keep the one-time heir apparent, Jimmy Garoppolo.

Had Belichick been allowed to deal Brady to San Francisco instead of Garoppolo, it goes to figure that Brady would have garnered at least a first round draft pick, and the Patriots would be rolling forward with no questions about the quarterback position and with a roster that played to his strengths.

Some would argue that the Patriots wouldn't have their sixth Super Bowl title in that scenario - which is the goal, after all - but who's to say that Garoppolo wouldn't have been able to pull that off?

We'll never know, but what we know now is that the Patriots have to move forward without either, leaving second-year, seldom-played Jarrett Stidham as the quarterback and, due to Belichick's desperate wheeling and dealing last season to provide Brady with targets he would actually throw to, a significantly reduced stock of draft picks...

...not to mention (though I will), that Brady's defection carries a $13.5 million dead money hit on the Patriots' salary cap - not crippling, but almost.  The result has been a mass exodus of core players in free agency, as the Patriots just cannot afford to offer them the contracts that other teams can, and have.

The only way that Belichick could respond to this significant handicap was to start dealing players to other teams, sending Big Nickel safety Duron Harmon to Detroit for a mid-round draft pick, and there is probably more players on the way out in the same manner.

That process is still in it's infancy, and it will interesting to see how it turns out. But one thing is for sure: The Patriots will look much different this season.

Gronkowski's Ambivalence Towards 2018 Season Related To Belichick-Guerrero Tensions

So what's it going to be dude?

The "will he or won't he" speculation regarding Tight End Rob Gronkowski's rumored retirement took several twists past few weeks, when in-the-know NFL reporter Ian Rappaport tweeted that the monstrous man-child would play in 2018, and then Gronkowski's agent said not so fast - but in truth, there was no way that Gronkowski was going to retire no matter how ambiguous his own cryptic tweets made the situation seem.

Actually, Gronkowski's possible retirement, were there any real foundation to it, waxes nostalgic in one sense, as it compares to Barry Sanders' sudden retirement from football in 1998.

After the 1998 season, Sanders announced via correspondence to his hometown newspaper that he was retiring after ten seasons with the Detroit Lions, leaving behind millions in salary and a big mess for the powers-that-be in the National Football League, who were forced to bring in an arbitrator to rule on a Lions' demand of the repayment of part of his signing bonus.

Sanders offered to pay back the $5.5 million of the bonus which he had already received after signing a six-year contract a couple of years earlier, the lone stipulation being that Detroit grant him a release from his contract - and when the Lions refused, the league brought in the arbitrator and Detroit got back it's signing bonus, spread out over three years and Sanders remained retired.

It's impossible to know just how much Sanders had left in his tank, but it was obvious from his request to be released from his contract that he felt he had more to offer football, and was, in fact, a mere 1500 yards short of the all-time record for rushing yards in a career - which he could have surpassed with an average season (for him) on the ground.

But Sanders had often been heard saying that he was more concerned about his life after football than in setting records, and having been fortunate to have not suffered major injury in his career, he left the game as healthy as any 10-year veteran could.

The same can not be said about Gronkowski.

Having missed his entire junior season at the University of Arizona due to back surgery, and skipped his senior season to make himself available for the NFL draft, where all 32 teams initially passed on him in the first round because of the medical red flags and despite his obvious upside, and when he was still available on the 10th pick of the 2010 draft...

...and with the Baltimore Ravens poised to take him at number 11, Patriots' general manager Bill Belichick leapfrogged the Ravens, trading a sixth rounder to Oakland to move up and select Gronkowski. But after two superlative seasons that saw him win Rookie of the Week honors twice in 2010 and become an All Pro in 2011, his medical past came back to haunt him...and the Patriots.

In the 2011 AFC Championship game versus the Ravens, Gronkowski suffered a high ankle sprain and strained ligaments which hindered him in Super Bowl XLVI and required surgery in the offseason to repair - then late in 2012 he suffered a broken forearm against the Indianapolis Colts, but tried to come back for the playoffs, where he suffered a break on the not-fully-healed forearm.

After four surgeries and one infection on the forearm and a minor cleaning out procedure on his back, Gronkowski was able to return midway through the 2013 season, only to suffer a torn ACL and MCL, plus a concussion on a vicious hit from Cleveland Browns' safety T.J. Ward - but was bale to return in 2014 and play well enough to earn All Pro status for the third time and to win the Comeback Player of the Year award.

He played relatively injury-free football in 2015 and for most of 2015, before suffering a pulmonary contusion against the Seattle Seahawks which caused him to miss one game, only to suffer a herniated disc in his back the following week against the New York Jets, which ended his season - but in 2017 he came back from the procedure at full strength to earn his fifth nomination to the All Pro team, but suffered another concussion in the AFC Championship game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Many assumed that it was his injury history taking a toll on him that prompted his talk of retirement, but lately the talk has been centered around Belichick's supposed feud with Tom Brady's personal trainer, Alex Guerrero, whom Gronkowski sought out last offseason and whom he credits for sustained flexibility and overall wellness.

So significant were the results of his training regimen with Guerrero, that other Patriots players started looking into what is known universally as the "TB12 Method" - and chatter is that Gronkowski felt disrespected because the team wanted him to train a certain way, and his body wasn't responding the way it had training under Guerrero.

The result, of course, was that Belichick suddenly had enough of Guerrero being a fly in his ointment, reportedly since 2015 when several of his training staff reported to Belichick that Guerrero's alternative methods were clashing with the regimen set forth by the often-times feisty head ball coach - and two years later when his prize tight end bulldog started making waves about not being allowed to train the way he wanted to, Belichick banned Guerrero from the locker room and the sidelines during games.

Of course, as far as any of us are concerned, that is all speculation, but it does feed into the air that surrounds Gronkowski's attitude, and the assertion of a Providence Journal columnist that the Patriots attempted to stop an article about the dietary changes he struggled to make to fall closer in line to the diet that Brady swears by.

Obviously, there are egos to be massaged here. Belichick runs his team the way he runs his team, and experiences some measure of aggravation when people try to test him on that count - so Brady has to be a constant strain on him, particularly since he told his staffers in 2015 that his hands were tied because of Brady's special status on the team.

For that, he can probably thank owner Bob Kraft, who considers Brady family.

While it's not good to give one player special status and expect the other members of the team to follow the prescribed regimen, whatever Brady is doing is working for him, and since the theory behind Guerrero's  is "Prehab, not rehab", meaning to train in order to avoid injury, of course the oft-injured Gronkowski is going to hop on board.

There's no easy solution to this. Brady has his status, and that seems to be the bitch-kitty here. As long as Brady plays, the issue with Guerrero will exist.

Perhaps that is why there was such a stink at the trade deadline when Belichick traded heir-apparent Jimmy Garoppolo to the 49ers for second round draft capital instead of keeping him and having the fate of the entire organization resting a little easier - and as an ironic sidebar, there have been reports that Brady is planning on taking his retirement year-to-year...

...meaning that if Brady retires after the 2018 season, the quarterback position is not well-accounted for, and the trading of Garoppolo would then seem like an epic gaffe - and if the team had known this all along, Garoppolo would have been franchised, even at the expense of the salary cap, for the greater, long-term good.

He would also still have Gronkowski to contend with and would likely have to trade him or let him walk into free agency or into retirement at the end of the 2019 season to make the rift between Belichick and Guerrero go away.

But if Gronkowski is serious about hanging up his cleats, his circumstance is similar to the aforementioned Sanders in that he is the unquestioned best player at his position in the prime of his career, still under contract, and within reach of several NFL records for a tight end - and like Sanders, is already considered among the best to ever play the game and is most likely in line for a gold jacket.

But Gronkowski hasn't asked for his release and wouldn't receive it, anyway, because whether being released or retired, there would be some pretty severe financial considerations to attend to.

The first being that Gronkowski is slated to be the highest paid tight end in the league this season, with or without any incremental bonus structures like we saw with him last season, which would render moot any chatter about wanting to be the highest paid player at the position - not that we've heard any of that kind of talk from the Gronkowski camp...

...nor have we heard, well, anything from Gronkowski except for assorted cryptic hashtags on social media - though beat writers around New England are opining that Gronkowski's issues were more along the internal workings of the ball club line than anything health related, with one writer going so far as to say that there needed to be a clearing of the air among the power structure at One Patriot Place, while another opining that the Patriots should deal off Gronk to the highest bidder.

Indeed, clear the air - but that has already occurred and Belichick knows just where he stands in all of this and whatever happens with Gronkowski is going to be by Belichick's hand, not Kraft's and certainly not Gronkowski's, because there is a $4 million dead money hit to the salary cap whether he trades him or Gronkowski retires.

It could get ugly, and that would be a shame.

It doesn't have to, though. If Belichick could see that Gronkowski is committed to do for his body in order to be a healthier, better player, and if Gronkowski could stop antagonizing him with his childishly clandestine tweets, and if Bob Kraft could just stay in his office and leave the team to Belichick, it won't get ugly.

But given the egos involved, that's probably not going to happen. Good thing there's enough talent on the Patriots' roster to overcome the battle of the psyche's...

Patriots' Turmoil: Artistic License, Constitutional Protections Drive Stories As Truth Becomes Speculation

"What a vile little thing is Evil Little Bill. The way he treated Wes Welker is disgraceful. Man has absolutely no loyalty to anyone. Watch and see, when Tom Brady's talents start to fade - and they will, it happens to all of them - Evil Little Bill will ship him out as well." - George R.R. Martin

Quite obviously, Martin - the author of the novel series A Song of Fire and Ice, which spawned the HBO series Game of Thrones - is not a Bill Belichick fan, but one has to wonder if he would be had the Dark Master remained with Martin's beloved New York Jets as their head coach rather than opting out with a cocktail napkin.

No one knows for certain if Martin would have been singing a different tune, and only he knows if he had any admiration for Belichick when he was helping Bill Parcells win Super Bowls in the 1980's as the Tuna's defensive coordinator with the New York Giants, for whom the author shares the same affection as he does the Jets, but it is clear that he is less than enamored.

In fact, when the Giants ruined the Patriots' quest for a perfect season in 2007, Martin immortalized the occasion in his sequel, A Dance With Dragons, with a the passage, "The galley was also where the ship's books were kept - the fourth a final volume of the life of Triarch Belicho, a famous Volantene patriot whose unbroken succession of conquests and triumphs ended rather abruptly when he was eaten by giants."

Eaten by giants, eh? Martin loathes Belichick to the point that he pulled a Dante Alighieri and named a character - at least in passing - as a past nemeses who got what he deserved. Of course, Dante's victims were scattered all over hell while Belichick was merely an appetizer, but the course is the same in that Martin, like Dante, was apparently obsessed with seeing his enemies suffer.

The thing about writing is that artistic license affords one to create whatever inspires you, and in the case of Martin and the fantasy novels that he publishes, there are no facts to distort and the only sources that are needed are an imagination, a thesaurus and a laptop - but when writing about reality, accuracy is paramount and artistic license is generally frowned upon.

Of course, there are ways around accuracy - rather, there are ways of telling a story without having to take responsibility for said accuracy - and this through what has become known as "Reporter's privilege", a reporter's protection under constitutional and statutory law from being compelled to disclose his sources."

It's a different kind of artistic license wherein anyone can make up anything about anyone, no matter how malicious and damning it may be, and all that person has to claim is that their knowledge came from an anonymous source, and absolve themselves of responsibility for anything they write that may or may not be true.

Anonymity leads to ambiguity which leaves the reader with no choice but to believe it or not. That is where responsibility to readers comes into play, as readers tend to eventually gravitate to writers who demonstrate a level of journalistic integrity...

...which brings us back to Belichick and the way in which the media interprets his legacy.

There is news coming out of Foxborough during the New England Patriots' bye week that paints a picture of a fractured relationship between Belichick, his certain Hall of Fame quarterback, Tom Brady, and the owner of the team, Bob Kraft - but this isn't the first that any of us have heard those kinds of rumors, and the fact that the recent DeflateGate episode has left such a bad taste in the mouths of New Englanders, that they are loathe to believe the media.

If  ESPN's Seth Wickerstam is to be believed, the Patriots have devolved into a high school team where Brady is the star quarterback who bends team rules when it comes to fitness, Belichick the rule-crazed principal who thinks the star quarterback has gotten too big for his britches, and Bob Kraft the President of the Alumni Association whose meddling has turned Brady and Belichick against each other.

And why not? After all, Patriots' fans will remember a contentious relationship that Kraft had with Bill Parcells, one that came to a head in the 1996 draft, when Parcells wanted to use their first round pick to select defensive end Tony Brackens, but was trumped by Kraft who issued a unilateral decision to draft wide receiver Terry Glenn instead.

Parcells coached the Patriots to the Super Bowl that season and came within a Desmond Howard kickoff return for a touchdown of defeating the Green Bay Packers for New England's first world title, but left immediately after the Super Bowl uttering, "If they want you to cook, they at least ought to let you shop for some of the groceries."

When Parcells left, Kraft interviewed Belichick but ultimately hired Pete Carroll to succeed Parcells, allegedly telling Belichick to work on his people skills and his interaction with the media, which, Kraft noted, was contentious to the point of being hostile when Belchick was coaching the Cleveland Browns. Eventually Kraft fired Carroll and turned to Belichick, who had just accepted the head coaching job for the New York Jets.

And the manner in which Belichick resigned as the "HC of the NYJ" - submitted to Jets' ownership on a cocktail napkin - alienated him from the fan base in New York and caused a firestorm of negativity and hate in the media. And when he signed on with New England just hours later, well, you can pretty much take the story from there as to why the New England / New York rivalry is so vicious.

There is more - lots more, in fact - but what has already been presented is more than enough evidence to support the fact that the media would be inspired to start a rumor about the Patriots in general and Belichick specifically. But the question must be posed: to what gain is there for anyone concerning this story?

The answer to that is, simply, to trash the Patriots' organization in an attempt to kick them while they are "down", to use alleged squabbling between the parties to cause yet another postseason distraction for a team that has the market cornered on that subject. Consider:

Back in 2002, Bill Belichick traded quarterback Drew Bledsoe to the Buffalo Bills, which made an enemy out of some in the Boston media (Ron Borges, specifically), and the next season he released safety Lawyer Milloy, who signed with the Bills just as training camp was breaking - and the word coming out of the media on both occasions was that "Belichick has lost the locker room" and that the players hated him...

...then in 2007, the Patriots were caught taping defensive signals from the wrong area of what is now MetLife Stadium and it was rumored that team owner Robert Kraft was tiring of Belichick's antics, and then the players hated him again after he traded off defensive tackle Richard Seymour before the 2009 season, and again when he gave Wes Welker the heave ho in 2013...

...not to mention the Aaron Hernandez saga, when the media was quick to bury the Patriots for allegedly knowing about his criminal activity, but then cutting him loose when things went sideways.

The National media is well aware that the Patriots' success elicits negative emotional response from the fan bases of the other 31 NFL franchises, and sees anything that paints them in a a position of turmoil - be it by internal strife or dark malfeasance - as instant clickbait to bring millions of readers to their websites.

DeflateGate was a perfect example of the power that the media has over our lives, and how they work to form our opinions, and also how powerful enterprises such as the National Football League can publicize their agendas by feeding us what they want us to know - and with reporters empowered with artistic license by the constitution, they are able to take what the entity tells them and expound upon it without fear of reprisal.

This recent story involving Belichick, Brady and Kraft is simply another example of artistic license making the media immune from responsibility - and since these are the Patriots, the author knows that because of their past "transgressions", anything they say about the Patriots will be accepted as fact by the majority of their readers, thus giving them license to publish either fact or fiction with equal confidence.

So what, exactly, is happening with the Patriots, internally?

Probably, there is some truth to the report, but the anonymous sources cannot be confirmed, so all we have is a couple of old stories being resurrected and pieced together by a plagiaristic hack at ESPN, who knows that the fan base of 31 other NFL franchises are going to take the ball and run with it, spreading the hate and causing distraction to the defending champs.

None of us a privy to what goes on behind the Gillette Stadium doors, so for a reporter to quote so many anonymous sources causes one to question the legitimacy of his tale, as being an example of he said-she said, circumstantial evidence that wouldn't hold up in court, nor does it hold up to those who think for themselves.

And that's what this is all about. Reporters have a job to record history, and as such also have a responsibility to history to ensure that what they are reporting is accurate - and if they are allowed to go about their jobs unchecked by the truth, will history hold them to their words, or will they be excused with the fallacy of being fed bad information and therefore are blameless?

The media has a responsibility to record history, not to make it up as they go along - and with stories like this buoyed by evidence that cannot be substantiated without breaking the law concerning anonymous sources, one has to wonder if artistic license has had a hand in making up the history books as we know them today?

After all, embellishing the truth is now the national pastime.

The Patriot Way Invoked, Goodell's Power Play Backfires

"The Patriot Way doesn't mean perfection.  The Patriot Way means doing your best, striving to realize the zenith of your profession - along the way affording opportunity to players who may have lost their way - if it doesn't work, then it didn't work.  Not every idea does, but every once in a while a gem emerges as a result of the given opportunity that no other team could absorb without falling apart... 

...their want and desire to be better than everyone else a creed that has existed in human nature since the beginning of time, and is essential to the success of any business endeavor - the Patriot Way is strong and it will survive, because to people with souls and consciences it means so much more than something created to be destroyed." - Foxborough Free Press, 13 July, 2013

In July of 2013, the brand of football known as the Patriot Way took many shots to its bow, mired in a controversy that divided a football nation.  There was a murderer among them - a bright, well articulated lad who grew up just minutes from where he would play professional football, and even closer to the spot where he gunned down an old friend who knew Aaron Hernandez a little too well...

...the division coming between football fans who felt that dumping the talented tight end on the day of his arrest for the murder was knee-jerk and exclusionary and those who applauded team owner Bob Kraft for acting so quickly and surgically, ordering that anything and everything possibly connected with the Hernandez name be stricken from his brand.

Those were tough times. The pro-Hernandez people demonizing Kraft for erasing his existence from the company ledgers, while on the field head ball coach Bill Belichick was suddenly tasked with building an offense without Hernandez, without fellow tight end Rob Gronkowski who was only months removed from multiple surgeries on his forearm and back, and all while breaking in a brace of rookie receivers.

In fact, the only returning pass catcher of note was Julian Edelman, whose 21 catch, 235 yard 2012 season didn't exactly inspire much confidence - but in the end Edelman stepped up, Gronkowski went back down, Hernandez was in prison for the rest of his life, Kraft was proven correct and the Patriots still went to their third consecutive AFC Championship game.

Indeed, the Patriot Way is something that the franchise can lean on in times of mayhem, because it is built on a solid foundation of business fundamentals and the utter genius of the coaching talent that, in that particular case, galvanized the team even as the fan base and media were jumping ship, claiming that the Patriot Way was dead, some insisting that the thing never existed at all.

But now, the Patriot Way brand has taken an even bigger hit with the National Football League accusing them of using under-inflated footballs, an offense that calls for a petty fine and a stern warning but has spiraled out of control into a vortex that is threatening to destroy the NFL as we know it...

...which says a lot about our culture when the air pressure inside of a football is a bigger news story, a bigger controversy and, in many ways, a bigger drama than a young man being shot to death by a football player, bigger than players smacking around their wives or dragging their kids behind the woodshed for a proper beating, and bigger than any other issue facing the game today.

It's been ugly, but no one except a handful of league executives and lawyers from the NFL Players union knew how ugly it has been - until now.

Last week, the National Football league and the NFL Players Association agreed to an expedited schedule that would harangue a busy federal court docket to rule on Brady's four-game suspension handed down to him by NFL discipline czar Troy Vincent at the behest of commissioner Roger Goodell, and subsequently upheld by the commissioner after a marathon appeal hearing.

Part of the motion to U.S. Second Circuit Court Judge Richard Berman was that all records be sealed at the insistence of the NFL and agreed upon only as a matter of amicability by the NFLPA - this despite Berman's statement in his original answer to Brady's Petition to Vacate that he finds it difficult to seal records, given the publics right to know about a case that carries the national interest...

...though he did welcome the parties to motion him to seal the records of the case, but when Brady's Petition to Vacate hit Berman's desk, the Judge denied the motion to seal the petition which included both transcripts of the mid-June appeal hearing and dozens upon dozens of paparazzi-proofed electronics communications from Brady's email accounts.

Earlier last week, when Goodell announced that he was upholding Brady's suspension, he attempted to gain the competitive advantage over Brady's legal team with a preemptive first strike, petitioning the Manhattan-based court for confirmation of his decision in hopes that it would trump Kessler's plan to file Brady's Petition to Vacate in the Eighth Circuit Court in Minneapolis.

It was a triumph for the NFL when Judge Richard Kyle ordered the case transferred fully to the Manhattan court, but it would be the last victory the NFL would taste, as Berman has allowed Kessler and the NFLPA to rapidly peel back the protective cover off of the NFL's apparent set up of the Patriots, with the transcripts providing obvious insight as to why the NFL insisted on the documents being sealed...

...for had they been sealed, the public would have never known the actual amount of animosity that the two sides have for each other, something that has turned a simple equipment violation - still unproven - into one of the most sensational controversies in the history of professional sports.

Mind you, even though the court of public opinion would have remained ignorant to the information on the transcripts, Berman would still be well aware of their contents and would rule as the evidence permitted, regardless of public disclosure.

The NFL's case was already crumbling as the public began to tire of the constant leaks of false information coming out of the league offices, each one easily shot down, and then again with Bob Kraft's timely and terse response to the latest leak - Brady "destroying" his cell phone - in releasing a string of emails between Patriots' lawyers and the NFL's general counsel Jeff Pash, indicating that the NFL was aware that they had a leak problem, but refused to recant.

And if those emails indeed showed arrogant disinterest in the Patriots' repeated requests for redress, the transcripts elevated that perception, painting the NFL as nothing more than a gaggle of ambulance-chasing narcissists who, as Kraft opined, are more interested in being right than anything else.

But none of that matters, at least not in court where the Brady legal team is tasked with showing that the commissioner is evidently biased and has shown manifest disregard for the law, both of which are literally dripping from the transcripts - so numerous the occurrences, in fact, that one could close their eyes and drop a finger anywhere on any page and reveal either.

And not just those revelations, but also the aggressive disdain that the NFL displayed in their examination of NFLPA witnesses.

Lorin Reisner is an attorney with the legal offices of Paul Weiss, the same firm that employs Deflategate investigator Ted Wells, and acted as lead counsel for the NFL during the Brady appeal hearing. Reisner's resume is impressive. A former federal prosecutor, Reisner is recognized nationally as an expert in white collar crime, including securities and commodities fraud, complex fraud, cybercrime and public corruption...

Reisner

...so it is curious, given the man's experience in putting people like Roger Goodell in federal prison, would agree to examine witnesses at Brady's appeal hearing on behalf of Goodell and the league, especially in light of the fact that Wells was retained as the league's independent investigator in the matter, lending credence to the NFLPA's assertion that the entire process was unfair and, indeed, bias in favor of the NFL.

The ferocity and venom with which Reisner cross-examined first Brady, then Yale Dean of Economics Edward Snyder eclipsed the line where an objection would have been made in court by Kessler of badgering the witnesses, and was matched only by the hateful diatribe in objecting to Brady lead counsel Jeffery Kessler's line of question of the Exponent representatives.

Not surprisingly, Reisner's intimidation tactics coupled with Goodell and NFL attorney Daniel Nash taking turns chiding Kessler's hand holding style, was cause for rude dissension among all of the parties, with all three interrupting Kessler's examination on several occasions, causing mediator Gregg Levy to break up several verbal fracases.

Kessler masterfully led each witness down the path he wished them to go, which seemed to infuriate the three primary mouthpieces for the NFL as they constantly objected to Kessler's line of questioning - working in tandem, Reisner would object and then, curiously, Nash or Goodell would sustain the objection and/or chastise Kessler for being disrespectful to the witnesses - curious, as Resiner was far more abrupt in his badgering.

The release of the transcripts has caused the case against Brady to take a nearly complete 180 and has put the NFL on the defensive - and at the forefront is the law firm of Paul, Weiss, whose collective fingerprints are all over the NFL's case against Brady, as Wells testified that he was in cahoots with NFL Executive Vice President Jeffery Pash and Resiner showed up at the appeal hearing as the NFL's "first chair"...

...those two instances providing all Judge Berman needs to overturn Goodell's ruling on Brady's suspension, as their involvement on the side of the NFL shows partiality and, therefore, unfair process.

There are other incidents of malfeasance, such as Reisner's alleged working relationship with Pash, the flawed science of the Wells report, and perhaps most importantly, Goodell's manifest disregard of the law - which is a fancy way of saying that he ignored precedence and attempted to create a new, broad-sweeping precedence that would increase his disciplinary power ten-fold - but all Brady's team needs is to prove just one of them to overturn Goodell's ruling.

And that appears to be the crux here. Goodell saw the opportunity to turn an alleged obscure equipment violation by the league's marquee franchise into a power play that would cause the commissioner to become omnipotent in regard to his iron fist over the league, and where the lust for absolute power will corrupt absolutely, Goodell used every device at his beck and call to try and turn the Collective Bargaining Agreement into his own person manifesto.

But Brady's fight and Judge Berman's resistance to sealing court documents doomed Goodell's power play. We may never know how much of an influence that Bob Kraft's indignation for Goodell had on Berman, but Kraft taking the fight to the NFL and calling them out for their arrogance has strengthened the creed of the Patriot Way.

The Patriots have been embroiled in a controversy over the air pressure in footballs for nearly eight months now, and at times seemed to be at a very dangerous crossroads of their dynastic run, unable to erase the issue from their ledgers like they did Hernandez, simply because the NFL wouldn't let it go.

The Patriots don't have a score to settle here.  There is no revenge needed because justice in itself is all the affirmation that Brady and Kraft will ever need. The Patriot Way can not be perverted by the arcane lies and deeds of outside entities, nor can it be manipulated by public opinion, and as long as the franchise adheres to its own philosophy, it will represent all that is right with professional football.

And Goodell? His corrupt reign will forever be defined by his ineptness in arbitrarily handling discipline issues on a case-by-case basis instead of following well-set precedence, and also by his warped sense of entitlement that causes him to step into mess after mess, not knowing how to effectively pick and choose his fights.

In retrospect, Goodell probably shouldn't have picked a fight with the league's most successful franchise, nor with its greatest player, because when the Patriots are forced to invoke their Patriot Way creedo, it usually doesn't end well for the adversary.

"Perceived scores to settle was the impetus to Hernandez's life collapsing around him.  The Patriots don't have a score to settle with anyone, just a goal to attain, and if you happen to be in their way, well, you may just get stomped like a roach anyway." - Foxborough Free Press, 18 July, 2013

Indeed. Get ready for some stomping by the Patriots, both on the field, and off of it.

Paolantonio Report Signals Awakening Of Media To Brady's Innocence

"History is hard to know because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened." Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson loathed many more things than he actually feared, but one of his greatest fears was for the future of print media by being left in the hands of lazy journalists - people that he referred to as "dullards, bums and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity."

He knew. He saw it coming.

Thankfully for him, he isn't around to see his words become so prophetic, but in purely selfish curiosity, it would be interesting to hear his take on the evil and wrong Deflategate saga.  For certain, he would have thrown himself right into the fray and given Roger Goodell a taste of the whip that he wouldn't soon forget...

...and Ted Wells and the Wells' Report would have driven him purely crazy.  Thompson's best work was when covering the Watergate hearings back in the mid-1970's, his hatred for Richard Nixon exceeded only by his disgust for the working press, whom he saw as the scribes that would record history for posterity, and only a select few were up to the task.

But even with this fine quote from the good doctor rising from the grave he blasted himself into ten years ago, it could be construed that he was speaking of the Wells report, particularly the last line - because it never explains, in retrospect, what actually happened.

Fortunately for him, and for all who value justice, there are the learned folks at the American Enterprise Institute...

********************************

Good news travels fast.

Well, at least good news that is a month old, when finally corroborated by a respected right-wing Washington think tank.

The American Enterprise Institute sent shock waves through the world of professional football on Friday afternoon when they released their own independent report on the New England Patriots being mired in the throes of the so-called "Deflategate" scandal - but not a report on the scandal itself, rather, the Institute took to task the findings of the NFL-sanctioned investigation.

While stopping just short of calling the Well's Report an outright fraud, the Institute (heretofore dubbed "AEI") nevertheless jabbed at the report like a fresh fighter opposing a tired and old pugilist, before rocking the veteran with a roundhouse square to the grill - and now while Investigator Ted Wells crawls shakily on the canvas searching blindly for his mouthpiece, the national media are taking to their keyboards to report that the grizzled old attorney has met his match.

But this wasn't the first time we've heard that the Wells report was a biased, inconsistent witch hunt - at least, it's not the first time for some.

In it's letter of appeal to the National Football league over a month ago, the Player's Union (NFLPA to the uninitiated) issued a scathing retort to the penalties imposed on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, calling his four-game suspension, "grossly inconsistent with the League's prior disciplinary treatment of similar alleged conduct." and that "no player in the history of the NFL has ever received anything approaching this level of discipline for similar behavior."

But that just deals with the penalties imposed as a result of the Wells report that the letter from the NFLPA dismisses as grasping at "dubious, contradictory and mischaracterized circumstantial evidence merely to conclude that it is 'more probable than not' that Mr. Brady was 'generally aware of inappropriate activities'."

But, the question looms: why now?

For five months, the Patriots and Brady have been taking gut shot after gut shot from the media regarding the ball deflation saga, then taking a nearly mortal blow from the league when they released the Well's Report, an event that came with plenty of pomp and circumstance, and also with an automatic indictment against Brady and the team.

As you might expect, the repercussions from that report had even Patriots fans backbiting each other in wake of the severe penalties handed down by the league - and with plenty of former players and media around the country suggesting that Brady should just be a man, accept his punishment, then move on.

Some felt it prudent to come to Brady's defense, but their backhanded remarks felt awkward and accusatory.  It won't affect his legacy, some would say - but apparently Brady feels that isn't good enough.

On Tuesday morning, ESPN reporter Sal Paolantonio published a gushing report over some fresh information coming out of Patriot Place, saying that Tom Brady will settle for nothing less than full exoneration, and that the normally demure Bob Kraft was boasting that he fully expects Brady to be on the field and playing in the Patriots' season opener.

Paolantonio quoted directly from the letter from the NFLPA, using the "dubious, contradictory and mischaracterized circumstantial evidence" cited from the letter to it's full journalistic effect and, suddenly, websites and newspapers are reporting the content of that letter as if it were fresh and new, not a month-old document that they should have been more than generally aware of...

...and Brady should settle for nothing less than a full pardon, and Kraft should expect the face of his franchise to be the standard bearer on that Thursday night opener, when the team will unfurl its fourth championship banner in front of a national television audience on a night reserved for the league champion - a homecoming, if you will.

But long after that game is over, and forever on the internet - remember, there's no place to hide - the journalists, players and fans who found it easier to attack the integrity of both Brady and Kraft - indeed, the entire Patriots' organization - instead of taking the high road and actually examining the Well's Report and the resultant the letter from the NFLPA will always remember the day that the report from AEI forced them to acknowledge their own deficiencies.

For the journalists, that means taking a look at how you research a story, not just how easy it is to copy and paste from your IPhone.  For the players, it means don't throw rocks in your own glass houses by making self-indictments or accusatory, holier-than-thou soliloquies that you hope sounds like having someone's back - and for the fans, it means don't take either group's word for anything. Investigate for yourself before turning on a player like Brady based on the words of lazy journalists and players desperate to get decades-old skeletons out of their own closets.

Don't take my word for it.  For all you know I could be a lazy plagiarist with a hidden agenda or who deliberately misleads folks for my own gain - which I don't, but how do you know that?

In the end, however, Dr. Thompson's words resonate.  They make us wonder if our great grandchildren will ever know what actually happened in the first half of the year of our lord 2015, when the greatest quarterback of that generation - perhaps ever - was accused of and suspended for "more likely than not being generally aware." of the actions of Patriots' equipment personnel being involved in the deflation of footballs.

They will see that very few journalists, players and fans took the time to absorb the evidence before first issuing an indictment of said greatest quarterback, and then proclaiming his innocence once a group of well-read individuals from a political think tank decided that enough was enough, did their own investigating, and came to a conclusion that ripped the Wells Report to shreds.

It is shameful to think that this is our legacy, and that our recorded history is left to the hands of dullards, bums and hacks - but it is, as they say, what it is.  It is entirely possible that history will remember this episode as lore, much as we romanticize sports scandals of the past in our own generation - maybe they will even look at the way that we attach the suffix "gate" to any indiscretion and call us all unimaginative dullards.

Regardless, if Tom Brady and Bob Kraft and millions of Patriots' fans have their way, the only thing that is going to be suspended at Gillette Stadium on that early September night are the four Super Bowl banners suspended from the railings on Champions' Bridge...

"For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled."

AEI Report Provides Means For Both Kraft And Goodell To Save Face

Jeffrey Kessler was unavailable.

The time table for the National Football League to set a date in any appeal is 10 days from the date of a request for appeal from a player - many are confused by this, thinking that the appeal must be heard within 10 days of the suspended party's notice of appeal, but the 10 day period is merely a deadline for the league and player and all council to agree upon a date for an appeal to be heard.

The first date proposed would have seen Brady's appeal take place last week, but was delayed until June 23rd upon the request of Brady's lawyer, as he claimed to be unavailable on that date.

Goodell and Kraft at the Owner's meeting in San Francisco

Obviously, there was not much contention between the parties involved in regard to the delay, but with the release of a report from the American Enterprise Institute, (heretofore referred to as AEI) one has to wonder if Kessler's delay was a tactic to ensure that this very tangible piece of independent study was completed and in the public eye with time to spare in order to contradict what has been perceived in this blog as flawed and biased findings in the Wells Report.

The AEI released its independent study of the Wells report on Friday and, in line with the thoughts of most Patriots' fans and, indeed, Kessler, the findings of this right wing think tank presents potentially damaging contrast with the league commissioned report.

The American Enterprise Institute defines itself as a "private, nonpartisan, not-for-profit institution dedicated to research and education on issues of government, politics and social welfare...to serve leaders and the public through research and education on the most important issues of the day.", and its integrity and intellectual rigor is considered beyond reproach.

One of the more compelling features of the organization - and, indeed, what separates it from a for-profit entity such as the contributors to, and of, the Wells Report - is that it does not perform contract research, and that its research agenda is determined by its president in consultation with its trustees, scholars and fellows.

In lay terms, and as was made very clear in the preamble to their report, the AEI is a non-biased, independent research facility whose sole purpose is to elevate debate on many controversial subjects, and their findings are considered wholly independent and expert testimony in a court of law...

...so when this institute publishes a report that summarizes that the evidence presented in the case of the New England Patriots alleged deflation of footballs prior to the AFC Championship game matchup with the Indianapolis Colts last January is "inconsistent with the Wells findings", and that the "Wells report conclusions are likely incorrect" and that "a simple misunderstanding appears to have led the NFL to these incorrect conclusions", both the NFL and the Patriots have room to maneuver without losing face.

How much of the knowledge of this undertaking was known as far back as the start of the Owners meetings, when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Patriots' owner Robert Kraft hugged it out and exchanged a quiet word the night before Kraft announced that he was giving up the fight against the sanctions imposed on his team?

How much of the knowledge of the research being undertaken prompted Kraft's decision?  How much of it influenced Goodell's decision not to recuse himself from Brady's appeal hearing?  The world may never know, but logic dictates that AEI's report is a key piece of damage control measures undertaken by both men to not only clear the Patriots and Brady of any wrong-doing, but also for Goodell to have a base in which to distance himself from the flawed Wells Report.

The institutes reputation with the NFL is well documented, as it was the independent findings of AEI that caused the suspensions of all New Orleans' Saints players alleged to be involved in the so-called "Bountygate" incident to be overturned and vacated by the NFL when said findings were presented in an appeal hearing in November of 2012.

"Considering that our impartiality was at least implicitly recognized by the NFL in the past, we believe that our analysis in Deflategate...could help resolve this latest controversy." reads an introductory paragraph from an article released by the institute to the New York Times on Friday entitled, "Deflating 'Deflategate'" - meaning that both the NFL and the Patriots' Organization - as well as the NFLPA and Kessler - are bound by precedent  to accept the findings of the institute as being expert and impartial testimony.

What this means for Goodell and the NFL is that the findings of this report serve as a talisman to officially vacate penalties to Brady and the Patriots based on the "new evidence" that Goodell spoke of in his letter of refusal to the NFLPA to recuse himself from the proceedings, without fear of reprisal from the other 31 franchise owners of NFL teams.

Of course, to do so, Goodell would have to dismiss the entirety of the Wells Report, which would severely damage the reputation of attorney Ted Wells, a high-priced Manhattan-based litigator that the NFL had retained and contracted to investigate whether the Patriots had intentionally deflated footballs prior to the AFC Title game...

...which isn't going to be so difficult since the AEI basically concluded that the Wells report is indeed biased in its findings, electing to utilize portions of evidence that fit the findings that they wished to establish, while dismissing important portions of the same research - the AEI concluding that because of this, the Wells report is "Deeply flawed."

As for Kraft, the AEI report should be exonerating him in the eyes of his critics.  The day following his statement that he was giving up his fight against the sanctions levied by the NFL, he said that he knew that the fan base was going to be upset with him, but also asked the same fan base to trust him that he was doing the best thing for the organization and for the fans.

Kraft's pleas for trust from the fan base was met with extreme negativity by a majority who cumulatively have trashed Kraft on social media platforms, calling him a "wimp" who "backed down" to the power of the NFL and who "turned his back on Brady."

With this new evidence coming to light - assuming that Kraft and Goodell most likely knew about the AEI research being undertaken - the conversation between Goodell and Kraft in San Francisco gains some possible context and Kraft's decision to give up his fight against sanctions has reasoning to it that even his harshest critics should be able to recognize.

In the end, the people who will lose are Wells and some of Goodell's top lieutenants, whom it is reported initiated a sort of sting operation against the Patriots, and most likely dictated the course of the Wells report - which may or may not put their names on a list of defendants in any subsequent civil litigation pertaining to defamation of Brady's character.

There is apt to be much finger pointing between all of those people, but it stands to reason that both Goodell and the Patriots will come out of this controversy unscathed, while the people who precipitated the entire debacle are likely to be under heavy scrutiny and in a fight for their own reputations...

...then the only thing left to do is for Goodell to issue an apology to Kraft and the Patriots, and everything will be right again in Patriot Nation.

Goodell's Whispering Of Sweet Nothings Into Kraft's Ear Starting To Manifest?

"I have publicly expressed my appreciation to Mr. Wells and his colleagues for their thorough and independent work.  But that does not mean that I am wedded to their conclusions or to their assessment of the facts." Roger Goodell 

Shotgun weddings aren't as common as they used to be.

Even so, as late as the 1980's they were still an accepted practice in Europe, under the guise of the more subtle sounding "Arranged marriage" - though the differences between the two are subject to much conjecture and occasionally the laws pertaining to incestuous relations...

Kraft speaking at the NFL owners' meeting in San Francisco

...which is not to say that National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell were whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears last week in San Francisco, when they were spotted in a much-publicised embrace at a ritzy reception for the owners of the 32 NFL franchises, seated closely on a fine couch made of leather.

It is no secret that there is much bro-love between the two icons of American football, what with Kraft throwing his full weight and reputation behind Goodell in order for the Washington & Jefferson College Graduate with a degree in economics to become commissioner of the league when former commissioner Paul Tagliabue retired following the 2005 season.

That was no slam dunk for Goodell who, despite working for both Tagliabue and his predecessor, Pete Rozelle, in the NFL offices since the early 1980's (With a brief respite to work for the New York Jets front office in 1983), could not garner the votes of at least 21 of the franchise owners after four rounds of voting.  Before the fifth round, Kraft went to work pumping hands among his peers to gain the final vote needed to make Goodell the head man.

Kraft has stood behind Goodell in many struggles since, but that relationship seemed to have been permanently damaged at the onset of the so-called DeflateGate" scandal, when the NFL took it upon themselves to run a sting on the Patriots equipment managers to try and catch them in the act of deflating footballs instead of informing them of allegations against them, and telling them that if the deflation of footballs was occurring, it needed to stop.

Kraft angrily demanded an apology from Goodell if it were found that there was no evidence of the teams' wrongdoing, going so far as to build a website for the sole purpose of renouncing the Wells' Report when it finally hit the streets after four months of investigation that netted the Patriots' organization a record $1 million fine and the loss of two draft picks, and quarterback Tom Brady a four game suspension.

So, there was much intrigue and speculation as to what was actually said when Goodell and Kraft shared a hug and a quick word on the night before the NFL Owners meeting commenced in San Francisco...

...particularly in light of the fact that the next evening Kraft called an impromptu press conference, taking the podium to tell the world that he would not pursue an appellate course to gain redress of the stiff penalties handed down by the Commissioner's office in wake of the DeflateGate scandal.

Some saw this as Kraft and Goodell colluding to reduce a four-game suspension to Brady for his alleged passive role in the deflation of game used footballs prior to the AFC Championship game, while a few others saw it as just a good business decision by Kraft to just let it go and get back to football.

But most, including many Patriots' fans and almost every talking head in the Boston media, viewed this as nothing more than Kraft caving in to the far-reaching power of the commissioner's office.

But it would seem from the commissioner's words that he knows what an absolute fraud the Wells report actually is.  Maybe he felt obligated to accept those conclusions due to the fact that he had already paid Wells and his henchmen a five million dollar dowry, and that the wedding had to go on.

The Wells' Report looks like something a pre-Law student would put together in haste and half drunk in the wee hours before a graduate thesis was due, hoping to get a passing grade in order to keep his grade point average above the academic "Mendoza Line" of a solid "C" - the last 200 pages or so wrought with dribble that it would be routinely rejected by even the most liberal backwoods judge...

...yet Goodell signed off on it like he was a pig farmer armed with a shotgun and a fist full of notary seals, never taking into consideration that perhaps there were at least a few folks among the millions of football fans around the world that have been there with lawyers like Wells and understood all too well that the high-priced Madison Avenue attorney had twisted testimony from his investigation in order to give the general football public their desired outcome.

It was a high-style bag job all the way, and it could well be that the commissioner is now trying to distance himself from the $5 million man and his doomed graduate thesis, something that may have been the very thing that prompted Kraft to do his very public about-face at the owner's meeting.

In the wake of the Kraft bashing following his announcement, I wrote a well-received piece defending Kraft's decision in which was written that it was unlikely that Goodell would reduce the punishment handed down to Brady, but also that the punishment handed down to the team as a whole was not dependent on what happened with Brady's personal appeal, as it is solely tied to the language contained in the Wells' report.

Since that time, the NFLPA has petitioned Goodell to recuse himself as arbitrator in Brady's appeal of his suspension, a petition that Goodell has vigorously declined for reasons that are starting to become clear, and Patriots' fans - indeed, all of football - should take a step back far enough to read between the lines of his statement.

When Goodell stated in his letter to the NFLPA declining their petition that he was not wedded to the conclusions contained in the Wells' Report, for the first time since the debacle started after the AFC Championship game in January, the commissioner appears to be distancing himself from the mess that his own employees made of the sting, and also from the entirety of the Wells' Report, which has been examined by every two-bit lawyer in the country and found to be a fraud on its face.

To be clear, to distance himself from these things is the only way that the integrity of the NFL Shield can be preserved.  Fans don't care they he spent $5 million for his own personal ambulance chaser to conduct a fully biased investigation, its sole purpose to discredit the perpetually rule-skirting Patriots to cover the fact that the NFL's sting operation blew up in their faces...

...because once word was leaked to Indianapolis Star reporter Bob Kravitz that the NFL brass was in the locker room at halftime measuring the PSI of the Patriots' footballs and found them to be under-specification, he had no choice but to ride the wave.  But now that the document has been combed over more times than an insecure balding man's wispy locks and found to be just as disturbing, Goodell has discovered that the only way out of this mess is to put his foot down and get it right.

He can't just reverse the punishment, however.  The appellate process must be satisfied before any redress is granted - and that process started with Goodell stating that he isn't necessarily tied to the results of the Wells' Report, and that he's willing to finally be the commissioner and his own man to save the integrity of the sport of football.

So the shotgun wedding that Goodell was forced into by the actions of his lieutenants and by the doomed attorney Ted Wells looks to be on its way to annulment - and don't be surprised if the outcome of the proceedings is much more in line with what can deemed reasonable and fair.

Bob Kraft - Craftier Than Percieved

Robert Kraft is a patient man.

In fact, Robert Kraft is many things: a business magnate, philanthropist, owner of two north American sports franchises, has many honorary degrees in addition to his Masters degree in Business Administration from Harvard University, and has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Most of all, however, he is a fan.

A fan of humanity, of education and of the arts.  He supports hospitals, women's groups and builds stadiums for colleges.  He is a fan of sports, having owned a professional tennis franchise until that league folded in the late 1970's and he was rumored to be in contention to purchase both the Boston Red Sox and the Boston Celtics at points in his career.

He is a fan of football.  A New England Patriots' season ticket holder since 1971, Kraft struggled through the lean years like every other fan of the team, and in 1988 tried to purchase the franchise from founding owner Billy Sullivan, but instead ended up outbidding several suitors to purchase then Sullivan Stadium out of bankruptcy - a key move in that along with the stadium came the Patriots lease, that ran through 2001.

Seven years later, Kraft was approached by new Patriots' owner James Orthwein and was offered $75 million to buy out the remaining six years of the Patriots' lease on the stadium so that he could move the team to St. Louis, Orthwein's hometown.

But Kraft saw this as his time to again try and purchase the franchise. In rejecting Orthwein's offer, he offered to take the Patriots off his hands for a then-record $172 million.  Having no recourse but to remain in Foxborough for six more seasons in a dilapidated stadium, Orthwein accepted Kraft's offer and the rest, as they say, is history.

Kessler must prove the Wells Report biased and fabricated to win for Brady

Kraft's love of the game of football itself has been on display throughout his tenure as Patriots' owner. Most will recall Kraft leaving his terminally ill wife's bedside to become the driving force in settling the 2011 labor dispute between the NFL and the NFLPA, prompting Indianapolis Colts' center and team player representative Jeff Saturday to declare that Kraft "Saved the game of football."

Kraft so loves the game of football that he became the founding father and is still the primary sponsor of the Israeli Football League, an eight-man-per-side league that has been in operation for eight seasons and is to this day the most successful non-domestic league in football history.

Unfortunately, most Patriots' fans and most media outlets do not take into consideration that in all of these things, Kraft bided his time, following his instincts and knew just when to rise from the weeds and attack.

So when Kraft addressed the football world on Monday night from San Francisco and announced that he was dropping his fight with the National Football league over the sanctions levied by them as punishment for the DeflateGate saga, it caused wide-spread pandemonium in Patriots' Nation, the aforementioned fans and media ripping into Kraft as if he were a convicted child molester announcing that he was moving into a hubble across the street from an elementary school.

Not only had they forgotten the fact that Kraft had saved the Patriots in 1995 when he purchased the team, and all of football itself in 2011, but also that he has the patience of a saint and the business instincts of a hammerhead shark - which means that he knows when the proper time is to strike, and now is not that time.

That time will come upon the completion of the appellate process for Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady, who was slapped with a four-game suspension for his alleged role in the saga - a process for which he has turned to NFL killer, attorney Jeffery Kessler to resolve for him.

It is unlikely that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will budge from the punishment that he authorized for Brady, and Kraft knows this.  He also knows that the next step is to Federal Court where the NFL and Kessler will meet in mediation and, ultimately, with a court-appointed independent arbitrator...

...which will satisfy the demands of the NFLPA, and will likely strike down the punishment handed to Brady - or at least reduce it to a more fair sentence, at which time Kraft can take the results of the arbitration and then demand like-relief - because it goes without saying that the penalties handed to the Patriots, a $1 million fine and the loss of a first and fourth round draft pick, is excessive, given the crime - which was never proven anyway.

But that's only the tip of the iceberg.

In all likelihood, Kessler will tear down the Wells' Report, the 200-plus page indictment drawn up by prominent New York attorney Ted Wells at the conclusion of  his "independent investigation" on behalf of the league - which was anything but independent, given Wells' relationship with Goodell and the league - which appears to be fabricated and certainly was not unbiased, which was Kraft's assertion from the release of the document.

But Kraft's move is not dependent on Brady's suspension being reduced or overturned, rather, it is tied to the language in the Wells' report - and it just so happens that for Kessler to get justice for Brady, he will have to destroy the report, the very thing that will give Kraft the leverage that he needs to attack the league for redress of the monumental punishment.

Because if Kraft were to attack now, the Wells' Report stands in his way, flawed as it is - and he stands to lose much more than just an appeal, as filing an appeal in Federal court against the NFL also means that he is filing a lawsuit against the 31 other franchise owners, and if it comes down to a fight between Kraft and Goodell with the evidence that Kraft has in his favor now - which is none - it would take but 24 of the other owners in a vote to force Kraft to relinquish his ownership of the Patriots...

...which would be unlikely, but why take the chance?  Kraft has taken the prudent, albeit unknown and secretive path to salvation, employing his renowned patience and waiting for Brady's appellate process to expose the report as biased and, indeed, partial to the league and unfair to the Patriots and to Brady, then come out with a brace of legal beagles who will file perhaps one of the largest unfair practice suits in the history of professional sports.

What happens to Goodell at that point is a matter of speculation, but he could be dismissed as commissioner under a vote of no-confidence by the same measure of league owners, and dispatched from his lucrative digs high above Madison Avenue.

Will it come to that?  No one really knows for sure, but what we do know is that Robert Kraft has never backed down from a fight in his life, and he's not about to start now - and Patriots' fans need to remember that and give the benefit of the doubt to a man who deserves a couple of hundred of them, at the very least.