Role of rival owners. If Brady were allowed to go on the offensive with an investigation of the NFL's investigation, an interesting line of questioning would be exactly how the rival owners weighed in to pressure Goodell to issue extremely harsh penalties to both Brady and the Patriots.
Though the Colts' maneuvers at the end of the first half in the AFC Championship game failed to disrupt the Patriots' game plan, the ensuing public furor over Deflategate offered a potential for other team owners to severely damage the Patriots' 2015 season and to hobble them in future years by taking away two prime draft picks.
One might assume that Goodell would have shielded the investigation from such pressures, but he didn't. His own report -- and ESPN -- disclosed that rival owners were pressing for a hard line against Brady, with the NFL Management Council even intervening to advise Goodell how he should evaluate certain pieces of evidence.
Thus, what may have begun as a case of clever gamesmanship by the Colts may end up as an assault on the competitive integrity of the NFL. It would surely be interesting to see how Goodell -- on the witness stand -- would respond to questions of bias. But it appears that the NFL's preemptive move to locate the case before a corporate-friendly Manhattan judge may steal from Brady his day in court.
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