When Tom Brady took the NFL to court over his four-game Deflategate suspension, victory was not guaranteed for the New England Patriots quarterback.
Brady’s attorney, however, says his camp went into the trial with zero doubt their client was in the right.
“Yes, once we looked into this, we were convinced that what happened here at the league was wrong and it didn’t follow the rules of the CBA and it didn’t follow the legal requirements,” Jeffrey Kessler, who represented Brady and the NFL Players Association, said Thursday in an interview with WEEI’s “Dale & Holley,” via WEEI.com. “So, we thought it would probably take us having to go to court, which it did, but we thought eventually we would get here.”
The interview sounded like a victory lap of sorts for Kessler, who took the opportunity to throw a few jabs at NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent.
“I’m not sure that there is anything that would have caused (Goodell) to change his view, because I don’t think we had an arbitrator that was prepared to consider the evidence openly and fairly,” Kessler said, later adding that the court proceedings allowed him to hear “terrific testimony from Troy Vincent about how they didn’t know what the Ideal Gas Law was.”
Oh, and this:
As for the league’s pending appeal of U.S. District Court Judge Richard Berman’s ruling, Kessler said he’s not concerned. The NFL will, he said, use “the exact same arguments to Judge Berman that he rejected.”
“They have a one-note defense,” Kessler said.
Kessler said he could not say with absolute certainty that Brady had no knowledge of any sort of football-deflating scheme, but he has no reason to believe the quarterback skirted the rules.
“What I can say is that everybody who has testified in this matter has said Tom Brady was not involved in such a scheme,” Kessler said. “He testified under oath. The two clubhouse people were interviewed and said there was no such scheme and he was not involved. There is no document that indicated he was involved in such a scheme. I am not aware of any evidence to indicate that that would be the case, and I believe Tom Brady.”
Thumbnail photo via Twitter/@TomLeyden
