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May 13, 2015

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Besieged Pats back Brady to hilt

Tom Brady and the New England Patriots are preparing for a fight.

The reigning Super Bowl MVP will appeal his four-game suspension, his agent said, and the team threw its “unconditional” support behind its quarterback after the National Football League came down hard on its biggest star in the “Deflategate” scandal.

“Tom Brady has our unconditional support,” Patriots owner Bob Kraft said in a statement issued on Monday night. “Our belief in him has not wavered.”

Five days after an NFL investigator reported that it was “more probable than not” that the Patriots broke the rules, the league handed down its punishment: Brady was banished for four games, and the Patriots were penalized US$1 million — matching the largest fine in league history — and docked two draft picks for using improperly inflated footballs in the AFC Championship game.

NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent also indefinitely suspended the two equipment staffers who carried out the plan, including the one who referred to himself in text messages obtained by the league as “The Deflator”.

In letters to the team and Brady, Vincent wrote that the league’s investigation found “substantial and credible evidence” that the quarterback knew the employees were deflating footballs. It also said he failed to cooperate with investigators.

The investigation by attorney Ted Wells found that Brady “was at least generally aware” of plans by two Patriots employees to prepare the balls to his liking, below the league-mandated minimum of 12.5 pounds per square inch.

Unless the suspension is overturned on appeal, Brady would miss the first four games of the season — including the league’s marquee September 10 opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers at which the Super Bowl championship banner would be traditionally raised. He would also miss games against Buffalo in Week 2, a home game against Jacksonville and a game at Dallas. Brady has three days to appeal the suspension to Commissioner Roger Goodell or his designee.

“The discipline is ridiculous and has no legitimate basis,” Brady’s agent, Don Yee, said in a statement that questioned the NFL’s integrity and opened the still-raw wound of the league’s botched probe of the Ray Rice domestic abuse case.

“The NFL has a well-documented history of making poor disciplinary decisions that often are overturned when truly independent and neutral judges or arbitrators preside,” Yee said. “Sadly, today’s decision diminishes the NFL as it tells its fans, players and coaches that the games on the field don’t count as much as the games played on Park Avenue.”

It’s the second time in eight years the Patriots have been punished. In 2007, the team was fined US$500,000 and docked a first-round draft pick, and coach Bill Belichick was fined US$250,000 for videotaping opposing coaches as a way to decipher their play signals.




 

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