Brady-NFL battle just getting started
Neither side in Deflategate will give in easily
TORONTO — Remember that scene in The Untouchables when Sean Connery’s Malone, a grizzled beat cop, lectures Kevin Costner’s Ness, an honest G-man, on the only way to get gangster Al Capone?
“Do you really want to get him?” Malone asks. “See what I’m saying? What are you prepared to do?”
“Everything within the law,” Ness answers.
Counters Malone, “And then what are you prepared to do? If you open the ball on these people, Mr. Ness, you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they won’t give up the fight ...
“You want to get Capone? Here’s how you get him. He pulls a knife? You pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital? You send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way.”
And as we saw this week, that’s now the Deflategate way. To continue that analogy, the first week of long knives and Tommyguns has just concluded.
It was as if Malone himself has been principal adviser to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and his Park Avenue lieutenants, as well as to owner Robert Kraft, and his New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
On Monday, five days after Ted Wells submitted his controversial Deflategate report, the league sledge-hammered the Patriots and Brady with punishments far harsher than expected. On Monday night, Brady’s agent fired back, skewering the integrity of Wells and his league-bought investigation, and promising to appeal the iconic quarterback’s four-game suspension without pay.
On Wednesday, word leaked Brady had hired renowned legal shark Jeffrey Kessler, who successfully chomped off chunks of Goodell’s pride and power in successfully appealing the commish’s bountygate and Ray Rice punishments.
On Thursday, Brady filed his appeal through the NFL Players Association.
Late Thursday evening, the NFL countered by leaking that Goodell has decided to hear Brady’s appeal himself, which is his right under the NFL-NFLPA collective bargaining agreement.
On Friday, the NFL leaked word that Goodell is unlikely to budge from that stance. So much figurative gangland violence. And we’re nowhere near done. If we’ve learned anything this week, it’s that both parties in this war are prepared to go all the way. No one’s giving up the fight.
Alert the hospitals and morgues.