We're all sick of Deflategate. It's an absolute nonstory that was made into a multi-year, national saga due to media narrative, incompetent leadership, and the fact that it's the Patriots we're talking about here, and all anyone wants is for it to go away. With the 2nd Circuit denying Tom Brady's appeal for a rehearing, it's more or less a certainty that one of the greatest players the game has ever seen will be missing a quarter of the season. The reason he will be missing a quarter of the season is dependent on where exactly you stopped paying attention to this garbage; I believe the goalposts have shifted from general awareness to deliberately orchestrating a deflation scheme to obstructing an investigation and has finally settled on destroying his phone. Who knows, and at this point, who cares.
And with this latest ruling from the 2nd Circuit, Tommy B has one last card in his deck to play. He can take this case all the way up to the Supreme Court, the last stop on the American Legal Express, and ask them to step in. It's a last-ditch, seemingly absurd option, and all signs point to the smart choice being to simply let all of this crap drop and get on with it. Enough scientists have come out of the woodwork at this point and enough facts have come to light that if you don't believe that Tom Brady is innocent by now, you never will, so it's not like your opinion is ever going to change. And since the Supreme Court is the longest of long shots and Brady only has so much time left before he retires, it's likely in his best interests to just serve his suspension, get the extra four weeks of rest, and come back Week 5 fuming and ready to set the league on fire.
That said - Tom Brady should absolutely appeal to the Supreme Court.
I've heard the argument that Deflategate is basically just one big makeup call for not only Spygate, but all of the other filthy cheating that goes on inside of Foxboro that nobody seems to know about yet everyone is somehow certain exists - like when your parents ground you for breaking curfew, then when you prove that you were in fact home and in bed well before curfew, they decide to ground you anyway for something you probably got away with in the past. But that argument is nothing but a subtle concoction of speculation and pure, FDA certified crap, so it's absolutely time to take this appeal to the next level. I'm not particularly excited about the possibility of writing more Deflategate articles. Nor do I want to see this thing drag out any longer than it already has. But Tommy B should 100% take this all the way to the bitter end, and here is why.
First and foremost: if you didn't do something, you fight it for as long as you can. You maintain your innocence and you stick to your guns to the very end. Tommy B is never one to give up, no matter what, and when you have sworn under oath that you didn't do anything and have the science to back it up, you exhaust all possible avenues, no matter how slim your chances. And while, unlike those who somehow find it completely impossible to understand how any sane, rational, unbiased person could even entertain an inkling of a notion that he is anything but the guiltiest man who has ever been found guilty of anything, I'm willing to admit that there's certainly a chance that something shady may have gone on. But if it did, I have no idea what it was, and that scheme failed spectacularly, because nobody has anything to show for it and nothing got done. Because of that, I'm far more inclined to believe that Brady didn't go anything and is being punished because the NFL treated this whole ordeal the way a prosecutor builds a case against someone rather than as an independent investigation, so he needs to take this all the way. If he loses, he loses, but at least he can say he stuck to his guns and did everything he could to reverse it.
Along those lines, if Tommy B does in fact say screw it and decides not to appeal, I can absolutely guarantee that every Patriots Hater on the planet is going to see that lack of appeal as proof positive that he's guilty, he's finally admitting it, and he has not only forever tainted his legacy, but he has also smeared the entire sport and wasted everyone's precious time (time that was spent all over Twitter and on comment boards, ironically) with a case that could have been over a long time ago if he had just admitted that he was a cheater and moved on. There are still those who think that Brady was found guilty, was then declared innocent, was then re-found guilty, and now that guilty verdict has been reaffirmed with this latest decision. But everyone else knows that this hasn't been about footballs for a very long time, and instead Brady has become the stage upon which Roger Goodell decided to flex the muscles given to him by the NFLPA; under no circumstances should he allow himself to be used as such. Should Brady decide to file a defamation suit against Goodell in the future, giving up at this point could have repercussions, for even though it has absolutely nothing to do with guilt or innocence, those who are enjoying the "Tom Brady is a cheater" narrative will see him laying down here as hard, irrefutable evidence that he did it. After all, if he was innocent, why not fight it till the end? It's because he knew he finally got caught cheating and he wasn't going to win, so now he has to take his lumps the way he should have a long time ago, right? And if that sentiment is given any more weight, it could possibly have implications on the defamation suit down the road.
And finally - I can't believe that I'm writing this - the Tom Brady case could end up reaching into other labor negotiations regarding jobs that actually matter to reality. If a ruling that allows the head honcho to do whatever the hell he wants regarding discipline is on the books, who's to say that it won't set some kind of legal precedent for when a bumbling buffoon of a CEO fires his employee because said CEO deemed said employee's actions detrimental to the company based on absolutely nothing? Could a dock worker lose his job and his pension because some hotshot lawyer cited Brady v. Goodell during the suit? I don't know, I'm no lawyer, but the fact that I'm even thinking about that means that there is much more at stake here than missing a few football games.
So take it all the way, Tommy. We're with you. You have maintained your innocence since day one, and have sworn as much in a court of law. You have never been a liar, and we don't think you're lying now. If you lose, you lose, but at least you'll have taken it as far as you possibly could. Of course the Supreme Court has better things to do - but obviously, none of the people who still care about Deflategate do. So let's do this.