Deflategate: Tom Brady Suspended Four Games, Patriots Penalized And Fined

The NFL sus­pend­ed New England Patriotsquarterback Tom Brady for the first four games of the 2015 sea­son Monday as part of sweep­ing pun­ish­ment against the orga­ni­za­tion for its actions in the so-called Deflategate scandal.

The league also fined the Patriots $1 mil­lion and docked them two draft picks — a first-rounder in 2016 and a fourth-rounder in 2017 — for vio­lat­ing the play­ing rules “and the fail­ure to coöper­ate in the sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion” co-led by attor­ney Ted Wells.

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Brady was sus­pend­ed “for con­duct detri­men­tal to the integri­ty of the NFL” after a 243-page report released last week by Wells indi­cat­ed he was more like­ly than not “at least gen­er­al­ly aware of the inap­pro­pri­ate activ­i­ties” by two low-lev­el team employees.

Those employ­ees, John Jastremski and James McNally, were sus­pend­ed indef­i­nite­ly with­out pay by Patriots own­er Robert Kraft effec­tive Wednesday, the league said, adding that they can­not be rein­stat­ed with­out approval by NFL exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of foot­ball oper­a­tions Troy Vincent.

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But most strik­ing was the sus­pen­sion of Brady, who is vir­tu­al­ly cer­tain to appeal. If the appeal fails, Brady would be eli­gi­ble to play no soon­er than an Oct. 18 Sunday night road game against the Indianapolis Colts — the team that first alert­ed the NFL to the mat­ter of whether the Patriots were using under­in­flat­ed foot­balls dur­ing last sea­son’s AFC Championship Game.

“With respect to your par­tic­u­lar involve­ment, the report estab­lished that there is sub­stan­tial and cred­i­ble evi­dence to con­clude you were at least gen­er­al­ly aware of the actions of the Patriots’ employ­ees involved in the defla­tion of the foot­balls and that it was unlike­ly that their actions were done with­out your knowl­edge,” Vincent wrote to Brady in a let­ter excerpt­ed by the NFL.

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“Moreover, the report doc­u­ments your fail­ure to coöper­ate ful­ly and can­did­ly with the inves­ti­ga­tion, includ­ing by refus­ing to pro­duce any rel­e­vant elec­tron­ic evi­dence (emails, texts, etc.), despite being offered extra­or­di­nary safe­guards by the inves­ti­ga­tors to pro­tect unre­lat­ed per­son­al infor­ma­tion, and by pro­vid­ing tes­ti­mo­ny that the report con­cludes was not plau­si­ble and con­tra­dict­ed by oth­er evidence.

“Your actions as set forth in the report clear­ly con­sti­tute con­duct detri­men­tal to the integri­ty of and pub­lic con­fi­dence in the game of pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball. The integri­ty of the game is of para­mount impor­tance to every­one in our league, and requires unshak­able com­mit­ment to fair­ness and com­pli­ance with the play­ing rules. Each play­er, no mat­ter how accom­plished and oth­er­wise respect­ed, has an oblig­a­tion to com­ply with the rules and must be held account­able for his actions when those rules are vio­lat­ed and the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the game is called into question.”

Brady has three days to appeal the sus­pen­sion to Commissioner Roger Goodell or his designee. His agent, Don Yee, said “the dis­ci­pline is ridicu­lous and has no legit­i­mate basis” and that Brady will appeal.

“And if the hear­ing offi­cer is com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent and neu­tral, I am very con­fi­dent the Wells Report will be exposed as an incred­i­bly frail exer­cise in fact-find­ing and log­ic,” Yee said in a statement.

Statement from the NFL

“The New England Patriots were noti­fied today of the fol­low­ing dis­ci­pline that has been imposed for vio­la­tions of the NFL Policy on Integrity of the Game and Enforcement of Competitive Rules relat­ing to the use of under-inflat­ed foot­balls in the AFC Championship Game of this past season:

For the vio­la­tion of the play­ing rules and the fail­ure to coöper­ate in the sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion, the New England Patriots are fined $1 mil­lion and will for­feit the club’s first-round selec­tion in the 2016 NFL Draft and the club’s fourth-round selec­tion in the 2017 NFL Draft. If the Patriots have more than one selec­tion in either of these rounds, the ear­li­er selec­tion shall be for­feit­ed. The club may not trade or oth­er­wise encum­ber these selections.

Patriots own­er Robert Kraft advised Commissioner Roger Goodell last week that Patriots employ­ees John Jastremski and James McNally have been indef­i­nite­ly sus­pend­ed with­out pay by the club, effec­tive on May 6^th. Neither of these indi­vid­u­als may be rein­stat­ed with­out the pri­or approval of NFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Troy Vincent. If they are rein­stat­ed by the Patriots, Jastremski is pro­hib­it­ed from hav­ing any role in the prepa­ra­tion, super­vi­sion, or han­dling of foot­balls to be used in NFL games dur­ing the 2015 sea­son. McNally is barred from serv­ing as a lock­er room atten­dant for the game offi­cials, or hav­ing any involve­ment with the prepa­ra­tion, super­vi­sion, or han­dling of foot­balls or any oth­er equip­ment on game day.

Quarterback Tom Brady will be sus­pend­ed with­out pay for the first four games of the 2015 reg­u­lar sea­son for con­duct detri­men­tal to the integri­ty of the NFL. Brady may par­tic­i­pate in all off-sea­son, train­ing camp and pre-sea­son activ­i­ties, includ­ing pre-sea­son games.

Commissioner Goodell autho­rized the dis­ci­pline that was imposed by NFL Executive President Troy Vincent, pur­suant to the com­mis­sion­er’s dis­ci­pli­nary author­i­ty under the NFL Constitution and Bylaws and the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NFL Players Association.

“We reached these deci­sions after exten­sive dis­cus­sion with Troy Vincent and many oth­ers,” Commissioner Goodell said. “We relied on the crit­i­cal impor­tance of pro­tect­ing the integri­ty of the game and the thor­ough­ness and inde­pen­dence of the Wells report.”

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The Patriots did not imme­di­ate­ly com­ment on the punishments.

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New England’s first four games in 2015

Sept. 10 — Steelers

Sept. 20 — at Bills

Sept. 27 — Jaguars

Oct. 11 — at Cowboys

New England’s fifth game is at Indianapolis on Sunday, Oct. 18. It is the prime-time NBC game.