The Patriots gave up a 2016 NFL Draft pick to appease Roger Goodell and the NFL. Now it's time for the NFL to return what it took from New England.

#freeThePatspick

Full disclosure: I realize my crusade to shame The NFL into giving the Patriots back their purloined draft picks is not of The Innocence Project level or import. This is two really rich organizations fighting over what basically amounts to .2 or .3 PSI of ball pressure with the winner getting to determine how long New England has to wait to be able to acquire what until this point has been unpaid labor at what amounts to a free farm system.

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Nobody looks good in this one.

Not the NFL. Not the officials. Not the Patriots organization or any of its subsidiaries like equipment guys. And certainly not Patriots quarterback Tom Brady who I am 92.7 percent certain improperly had his footballs deflated and rather unwisely used text to try to cover this up. My certainty is based on circumstantial evidence, a perusal of the Wells Report and, if I am being really honest, probably some conjecture I happened upon while doing my a.m. sports reading.

And this uncertain certainty is exactly why in light of Thursday's renewed litigiousness the NFL and really Roger Goodell needs to quit doubling down on their capricious, wrong-headed bullying and give The Pats back their draft picks.

What is at stake is the integrity of the league. Yes, again. The same principles that guarantee a fair trial for all apply in this case, too.

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This is about precedence and about fairness.

This is about having a standard.

This is about engendering faith in your organization.

There is a reason why police and lawyers have strict evidentiary rules to follow even when doing so is cumbersome to convicting a person they believe in their heart of hearts is a guiltier-than-bleep scumbag. A preponderance of the evidence, innocent until proven guilty, Miranda, the right to an attorney even if you can not afford one, the chain of evidence, a jury of your peers are less about the individual case and all about creating a system we can believe in and get behind.

You would think Roger would understand this as a son of a lawyer.

And this is why I’m not going to debate PSI. I am not a scientist and you don’t care (1) and the “facts” have ceased to be the point.

(1) In the interest of real keeping, the NFL does not even care. If they cared about the impact of weather on ball pressure, they would have tested every ball before every game and at halftime and after games. They don’t want the truth. They want to be right.

The time for gathering evidence and doing an in-depth and fair investigation was before Roger lost his fool mind and decided to drop the retroactive hammer on Belichick and Brady for every offense real and imagined they had gotten away with in the last 15 years and did so based on the flimsiest and most circumstantial of evidence. The other 31 owners had to be loving this, as did their paying customers who have been forced fed a decade of Pats dominance.

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And yet as glorious as this has been for some — to see Brady and Belichick getting their comeuppance — letting the league and mainly Goodell slide on yet another act-first, think-later, knee-jerk overreaction, on yet another unprecedented punishment based on his gut, on his continuing habit of imposing penalty based on his mercurial judge-and-jury form of punishment, further erodes whatever faith the players have in the system.

Four games for weed, two for domestic violence.

Unless there is video and then goodbye.

Four games for maybe deflating balls, zero for failing to adhere to the spirit of the Rooney Rule.

On and on goes the hypocrisy.

So I call on the NFL to #freeThePatspick. This is not about redemption for the innocent. This is not really about Brady or his balls at all. This is about restoring integrity to and belief in the NFL and its investigations, punishments and commissioner.

All of which are more deflated than those balls at the moment.