NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sent a strong, bold message with the four-game suspension of New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady on Monday.
The embattled commissioner turned a deaf ear to the caterwauling of the Patriots’ billionaire owner and league powerbroker, Robert Kraft, while staying remarkably resolute on what he likes to term the "integrity of the game."
Hopefully, the league and arbitrators will, unlike the Patriots, not let the air out of these sanctions.
Technically, the four-game suspension of Brady, the $1 million fine and loss of two draft picks were handed down by Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations. But, clearly, this was Goodell’s doing and he did what had to be done.
Had he so chosen, Goodell could have mandated that they be lightened and the Patriots’ backup quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, be kept in mothballs, but, really, the Patriots left him little choice.
The fine and draft picks –a first-round selection in 2016 and fourth-round choice in 2017 — matter little in the overall scheme of things.
Given a choice of a Super Bowl appearance or forfeiting two draft picks and $1 million, does anybody think Bill Belichick would need even a nanosecond to decide?
What does resound throughout the 32-member league is the suspension of Tom Terrific. Not only for what his absence on the field might mean for the Patriots this season but as an indictment of the team’s shady methods.
As a two-time league MVP and four-time Super Bowl champion, Brady is the face of the franchise, vying with Peyton Manning for the most visible profile in the league. That makes him the biggest luminary of the league yet disciplined by any of its commissioners.
By standing behind the 243-page Wells Report finding it "more probable than not" that Brady was "at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities," it dumps the whole sordid mess right on the Patriots’ doorstep.
New England, much as it wants to toss its two locker room employees, Jim McNally and John (self-described as "The Deflator") Jastremski, under the bus and be done with it, shouldn’t get off that easy.
It also renders laughable Kraft’s January contention — "I want to make it clear that I believe, unconditionally, that the New England Patriots have done nothing wrong" — and arrogant demand for an apology.
This is the second time the Patriots were deemed to have circumvented the rules to gain a competitive advantage. In 2007, the NFL fined the team and Belichick, ordering they be stripped of a first-round draft choice after the team was found videotaping the signals of Jets coaches.
A four-game suspension of Brady, one quarter of the regular season, qualifies as a principled stand by a commissioner who has had trouble finding the sweet spot on past sanctions. Two games would have constituted a waffle, and a mere fine or loss of draft choices would have been a joke.
We are, of course, left to wonder how many other chapters — perpetrated by both the Patriots and other teams — are there for NFL gumshoes to unearth.
In the meantime, the Commish has given notice that something more than a Park Avenue PR dodge may be meted out when they do.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
