Tom Brady Offered To Retrieve Every Single Message And Text The NFL Requested But Roger Goodell Said It Would Be Too Difficult

NBC – The P.R. mastery continued with the release of the Ted Wells report, which created the initial widespread impression that the Patriots cheated, and that quarterback Tom Brady knew about it. By the time those in the media inclined to digest the 243-page opus began to notice the warts, the narrative had been locked in by those who admittedly didn’t bother to roll up their sleeves and start reading.

The coup de grâce came Tuesday morning, when the league leaked to ESPN the notion that “Brady destroyed his cell phone,” locking in the notion that something sinister — and irreparable — had occurred. The press release announcing the decision likewise focused on the destruction of the cell phone, raising eyebrows from sea to shining sea and reinforcing for many the idea that Brady had something to hide, and that he tried to hide it.

But tike the much longer Wells report, closer inspection of the Goodell decision undermines the primary conclusion. And, as usual, the Achilles heel can be found in a footnote.
Specifically, it can be found at footnote 11 on page 12: “After the hearing and after the submission of post-hearing briefs, Mr. Brady’s certified agents offered to provide a spreadsheet that would identify all of the individuals with whom Mr. Brady had exchanged text messages during [the relevant time] period; the agents suggested that the League could contact those individuals and request production of any relevant text messages that they retained.

In English, here’s what the footnote means: Although the text messages couldn’t be retrieved directly from Brady’s phone, his agents provided all of the phone numbers with which Brady exchanged text messages. His agents also said that the league could attempt to get the actual text messages from the phones of the people with whom Brady communicated, but the league refused to attempt to try, claiming that it would be too hard to track down the various people and to persuade them to cooperate.

“I very much look forward to hearing from Mr. Brady and to considering any new information or evidence that he may bring to my attention,” Goodell said last month. And so Brady admits that he has a habit of dismantling his phone when he buys a new one, he provides the full list of phone numbers with which the dismantled phone communicated, and Goodell nevertheless refuses to try to identify the persons with whom Brady exchanged message or to obtain the actual content of them, despite the commitment to considering “any new information or evidence.”The league arguably opted not to track down the text messages or to match them up with text messages that the league already harvested from other phones, like the one used by John Jastremski, because the league already had the silver bullet it needed to win convincingly in the court of public opinion.

This all is well and good and makes perfect sense, but I’m going to simplify it even further. The NFL had all the text messages and communications from Tom Brady to begin with because they had all the phones from everybody else involved in this. Brady was the only one who didn’t turn over his device. Goodell didn’t need Brady’s cell phone. He already had all his conversations with everybody regarding Deflategate and they obviously turned up nothing. That’s why he didn’t bother to track down anything else because he already knew there was no smoking gun. The NFL has nothing, never had anything and never will have anything. This 4 game suspension is 100% based on their perceived lack of cooperation from Tom Brady even though they say themselves he offered to cooperate.  I swear to god it’s like I’m losing my mind here.