The NFL have decided to uphold Tom Brady's four-match ban after being implicated in the "Deflategate" scanadal, which saw game balls tampered with before New England Patriot's game against the Indianapolis Colts.
The league said in a statement Tuesday that “Brady was aware of, and took steps to support, the actions of other team employees to deflate game footballs below the levels called for by the NFL’s Official Playing Rules,” based on evidence presented at an appeal hearing.
This evidence was also based on a 243-page report compiled jointly by NFL executive vice-president Jeff Pash and attorney Ted Wells.
The league confirmed that Brady “directed the cell phone he had used for the prior four months be destroyed” on the day of his 6 March meeting with Wells and his colleagues, adding the destruction of the cell phone was not disclosed until 18 June, or nearly four months after the electronic information (including nearly 10,000 text messages) had been initially requested.
“The commissioner found that Brady’s deliberate destruction of potentially relevant evidence went beyond a mere failure to cooperate in the investigation and supported a finding that he had sought to hide evidence of his own participation in the underlying scheme to alter the footballs,” the league concluded.
In one rather damming extract the NFL said:
Mr. Brady’s direction that his cellphone (and its relevant evidence) be destroyed on or around March 6 is very troubling. Rather than simply failing to cooperate, Mr. Brady made a deliberate effort to ensure that investigators would never have access to information that he had been asked to produce. Put differently, there was an affirmative effort by Mr. Brady to conceal potentially relevant evidence and to undermine the investigation.
Mr. Brady’s conduct gives rise to an inference that information from his cellphone, if it were available, would further demonstrate his direct knowledge of or involvement with the scheme to tamper with the game balls prior to the AFC Championship game. Mr. Brady’s affirmative action to ensure that this information would not be available leads me to conclude that he was attempting to conceal evidence of his personal involvement in the tampering scheme, just as he had concealed for months the fact that he had destroyed his cellphone requested by the investigators.”
In their report pertaining to the scandal released in May, the NFL found that “it is more probable than not” that at least two Patriots employees improperly deflated footballs.
Moreover, the league made reference to Brady, stating that he was “at least generally aware” of the wrongdoing.
The Patriots have received a $1m and have been stripped of two draft picks, as well as a suspension to their best player.
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