Getty Images

The NFL has been mocked for Friday news dumps in the past, but it doesn’t sound like there will be one this week.

Ed Werder of ESPN reports that there’s “zero chance” that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will announce his ruling on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s appeal of the four-game suspension that the league handed down after Ted Wells’s Deflategate report. Goodell said earlier this week that there was no timeline for a ruling on the appeal he heard last month.

This week brought word of settlement talks between Brady and the NFL about a way to bring the long saga to an end, although there’s reportedly been “no progress” toward a resolution. Part of the reason for that may be the concurrent reports that several prominent NFL owners are urging Goodell to uphold the four-game suspension, which would open the door for a legal challenge to the suspension from Brady and the NFLPA.

The NFL would run the risk of losing that case and there’s a chance that the same legal challenge would surface if Goodell reduced the suspension without wiping it out completely and they’d run the risk of other criticism if the commissioner does press delete on the whole thing, but neither makes for much of an excuse for avoiding a decision altogether.