Looking back a year after the Deflategate scandal
Goodell punishes the Patriots and Brady, and why the Patriots acquiesced while Brady fought back
Five days following publication of the Wells Report, Goodell doled out harsh punishments on grounds that the Patriots as an organization and Brady as a player had breached the integrity of the game and failed to fully cooperate in a league investigation. The Patriots were fined $1 million, and they lost their first-round pick in the 2016 NFL draft and fourth-round pick in the ’17 draft. But the biggest punishment was Brady’s four-game suspension.
The Patriots and Brady were in very different legal positions to appeal Goodell’s punishments. As a franchise, the Patriots had contractually relinquished rights to contest league discipline that the team might otherwise enjoy. Like the 31 other NFL franchises, the Patriots are required to adhere to the league constitution, which expressly precludes teams from going to court to challenge decisions by the league and its commissioner. The Patriots could have internally petitioned Goodell to reconsider his punishment, but doing so would have enlarged the controversy and, perhaps more importantly, appeared doomed to fail: by all accounts, Goodell is unbendingly wedded to the belief that the Patriots deflated footballs.
Some nonetheless urged Patriots owner Robert Kraft to pursue the antitrust litigation strategy used with some success by the late Oakland
Raiders owner Al Davis in the 1980s and ’90s. Indeed, Kraft could have argued that the NFL and certain teams, such as the Colts and other AFC rivals, had conspired to frame the Patriots of wrongdoing and that such a conspiracy constituted anti-competitive conduct. There were emails between Colts general manager Ryan Grigson and NFL officials David Gardi and Mike Kensil (who formerly worked for the Patriots arch rival, the Jets) prior to the AFC championship game about Grigson’s belief that the Patriots were intentionally under-inflating footballs. Some believe the Patriots were set up in a sting operation of sorts.
Still, such a litigation strategy would have likely taken years to play out and would have awkwardly pitted the 74-year-old Kraft in court against the same league in which he is considered one of its most influential figures. Kraft’s argument would have also been a difficult fit for antitrust law. Recall that Davis had used antitrust law to challenge the NFL on the issue of business relocation, which is a type of controversy well suited for antitrust law. Kraft’s antitrust challenge, in comparison, would have been based on league discipline, which is a traditional power of a professional sports league and is less likely to have received a favorable reception in court. Therefore, it’s not surprising that Kraft declined to challenge the NFL, even if the loss of draft picks is a source of great aggravation to the Patriots and their fans.
