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But what happened here is tied in to the NFLPA's complaints.
Namely, that if the NFL is trying to punish Brady for not turning over the phone, then they have a big problem, because they didn't tell him that he could be punished for not doing so, and the CBA demands that players be notified of the charges against them.
If they try to argue that he's being punished for "awareness" of deflated footballs, they still have a problem, since they're apparently trying to do it under a policy that does not apply to players.
And then even if you resolve those issues, you still have the fact that Goodell ginned up a rigged appeal in which Brady's team didn't have access to the facts that the "independent" investigator had; moreover, the "independent" investigator was actually one of the attorneys for the NFL in the appeal.
Bingo! And the only provisions in the CBA for "equipment violations" are fines.
So keeping it narrow (players not notified in advance of the kind of punishments to which they're liable; applying a policy to individual players that is only supposed to apply to teams) will, in all likelihood, get the thing decided in Brady's favour without opening up the question of whether the league had pre-judged the issue, the independence of the investigation, the denial of process in not letting Brady know the evidence against him, etc., etc.