After doing, well, almost exactly what Bill Simmons claimed he’d do, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took the public temperature and decided Monday to hit Patriots QB Tim Brady with a 4 game suspension and New England owner Bob Kraft with a $1 million fine for the former’s role in deflation of game balls and failure to cooperate with the league’s investigation. While some are bemused that Brady’s punishment is roughly half what he’d get for spousal abuse (granted, there’s little competitive advantage in that), the Indy Star’s Gregg Doyel figures the Pats got off easy.
Four games for Tom Brady, who at 38 in August could use a break. A million bucks for a franchise Forbes says is worth $1.4 billion. A first-rounder. A fourth. Those are flesh wounds. They’ll draw blood, like so many flesh wounds do, but they won’t devastate the Patriots.
And the Patriots should have been devastated. Same for Brady. Not only did they cheat, but they didn’t cooperate fully with the investigation. Both locker-room attendants “were not fully candid,” according to Vincent’s letter to the team, and one of them – I think it was Dumb, though it could’ve been Dumber – refused a final interview request.
Brady cheated the Colts, probably cheated a lot more teams than that, then refused to help the NFL get to the truth … and all he got for it was a lousy four-game suspension.
And a T-shirt that says “2015 Super Bowl Champions.”