Tom Brady may skip “Deflategate” hearing in federal court today

The Patriots open their regular season on Sept. 10 against the Steelers, a game for which Brady’s availability remains in question.

It all started during the A.F.C championship game back in January when two staff members of the Patriots deflated the balls. On Wednesday, after a second hearing in which the NFL received harsh questioning in its handling of the Deflategate scandal, Berman warned the NFL that the court does have the power to wipe away Brady’s suspension. Judge Richard M. Berman suggested Wednesday that he could have grounds to drop Brady’s suspension altogether should he decide to do so, citing concerns about the league’s issues with “fundamental fairness and evident impartiality”.

Brady didn’t attend the Patriots’ practice on Tuesday, though the team didn’t say why he was excused.

With that said, if the NFL wants to suspend Brady for not cooperating during the investigation, such as not handing his cell phone over when asked about it, he is all for receiving some sort of punishment. “Taking the record as a whole, [NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell] determined four games”.

Tom Brady v/s the NFL will continue on Wednesday in the US federal court as both sides are persistent not to settle the dispute themselves.

However, settlement discussions on Brady’s attempt to overturn a four-game suspension have gone “nowhere”, according to the report.

Neither Brady nor Goodell was present.

“How is that equal to steroid use?” he asked of the deflation allegations.

A report by ESPN on Wednesday said Brady was mulling accepting a shorter suspension but only if it related to failing to cooperate with the NFL investigation, rather than the findings of the Deflate-gate probe itself.

Ted Wells, a lawyer hired by the NFL to probe how the footballs were inflated below league standards, placed the blame on two Patriots employees but said Brady was “at least generally aware” of what happened.

The judge used stronger language than he had when he seemed to lean against the NFL at a similar hearing a week earlier, though he cautioned that he had not yet made up his mind which side would win.