By a 2-1 vote, three appeals-court judges sided with the NFL and backed the commissioner’s authority to impose the suspension. “They were very firm in their decision that that was within our authority and the judgments were based on solid facts,” Goodell said. “So we’re actually pleased with that, and we hope we can move on from there.”

Good luck with that. There may already be fallout.

AD

Ten NFL executives and players told Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman that they have changed their opinion on Deflategate, a 180 from what the same group told Freeman a year ago. Their focus is the first real punishment for Deflategate, which will come Thursday, when the Patriots will not have a first-round draft pick. (They’ll also lose a fourth-round pick.) Although it’s like, as Freeman puts it, “Tokyo rooting for Godzilla,” his sources think the Patriots deserve to have the picks restored. They requested anonymity, Freeman writes, “for fear of angering the league office.”

“I hate the Patriots. I despise them,” an NFC team executive told Freeman. “But they really should get those picks back.”

AD

Freeman writes that many of his sources used the same word, “railroaded.” They believe Goodell, he writes, wielded power “unfairly and arbitrarily. They think, in effect, that what happened to the Patriots could happen to any of them.”

This turnabout comes from fear, not newfound affection for the Patriots and Brady.

AD

“The Patriots aren’t victims,” a general manager told Freeman, “but they are a cautionary tale for the rest of the league. They’re a reminder the commissioner can do whatever he wants, and there isn’t a damn thing any team can do about it.”

Freeman concludes:

Did the Patriots cheat? To many of the sources I spoke to, that’s not even the question. The league did not prove that the Patriots cheated, so the question is: How could it punish them anyway? While hatred for the Patriots remains fully intact, they all wonder what’s to prevent what happened to the Patriots from happening to them.

If the lower-court decision that sided with Brady and the NFL Players Association was about proof of wrongdoing, the appeals court decision was about power and the collective bargaining agreement, with Goodell emerging the clear winner.

AD