The same legal expert who said earlier this week that Tom Brady “probably will win” the NFL’s Deflategate appeal hearing sounds less confident after Thursday’s courtroom proceedings.
Michael McCann, a legal expert for Sports Illustrated and a professor at the University of New Hampshire, was among those who came away from the hearing with the sense that it went the NFL’s way. One particular comment by Judge Denny Chin, who said the evidence against Brady was “overwhelming,” really struck a chord with McCann.
“The ‘overwhelming evidence’ comment by Judge Chin, I was awestruck. I had no idea where that was coming from,” McCann said Friday on WEEI’s “Ordway, Merloni & Fauria.” “Even if you take the Wells Report at its word, it doesn’t make that point. This is taking what was ‘more probable than not’ and transforming it into ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ I don’t understand the sequence of how that happened in his mind.”
As McCann notes, it’s quite possible that much of what happened Thursday won’t have any bearing on the three judges’ evaluation of Judge Richard Berman’s decision last September to vacate the four-game suspension given to Brady by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for the New England Patriots quarterback’s alleged involvement in Deflategate. But it’s still interesting to hear how things unfolded, as Thursday’s appeal hearing wasn’t expected to include an analysis of the case itself.
“It’s possible that (the judges) were conscious of the media being in the room,” McCann said. “I don’t know if that’s the case, but it did seem as if their questions about facts were unexpected and, like you just said, not completely relevant to the narrow issue of whether Judge Berman accurately came up with three reasons to vacate Roger Goodell’s order.”
Brady’s chances of winning the NFL’s Deflategate appeal certainly seem bleaker now than they did just days ago. But this whole saga has been full of twists and turns, so we probably shouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point, for better or worse.
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Thumbnail photo via Greg M. Cooper/USA TODAY Sports Images
