New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady says he is “very disappointed” by the NFL’s decision to uphold his four-game suspension for his alleged involvement in his team’s use of underinflated footballs during January’s AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.
“Despite submitting to hours of testimony over the past 6 months, it is disappointing that the Commissioner [Roger Goodell] upheld my suspension based upon a standard that it was ‘probable’ that I was ‘generally aware’ of misconduct,” Brady wrote in a lengthy Facebook post on Wednesday. “The fact is that neither I, nor any equipment person, did anything of which we have been accused. He dismissed my hours of testimony and it is disappointing that he found it unreliable.”
Brady also tried to set the record straight about why he had his assistant destroy his cellphone around the time investigators contacted him about the football tampering commonly referred to as “Deflategate”:
I also disagree with yesterdays narrative surrounding my cellphone. I replaced my broken Samsung phone with a new iPhone 6 AFTER my attorneys made it clear to the NFL that my actual phone device would not be subjected to investigation under ANY circumstances. As a member of a union, I was under no obligation to set a new precedent going forward, nor was I made aware at any time during Mr. Wells investigation, that failing to subject my cell phone to investigation would result in ANY discipline.
Most importantly, I have never written, texted, emailed to anybody at anytime, anything related to football air pressure before this issue was raised at the AFC Championship game in January. To suggest that I destroyed a phone to avoid giving the NFL information it requested is completely wrong.
… We even contacted the phone company to see if there was any possible way we could retrieve any/all of the actual text messages from my old phone. In short, we exhausted every possibility to give the NFL everything we could and offered to go thru the identity for every text and phone call during the relevant time.
You can read the full post here.
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