New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has been huddling with his representatives in recent days - a team that now includes Jeffrey Kessler - as they attempt to craft an appeal that will get Brady's four-game suspension reduced.
Some reports have suggested that Brady will likely get the suspension reduced by one or two games, while another report emerged yesterday from Adam Schefter of ESPN that Brady and his legal team could get the suspension thrown out altogether.
A new revelation though, from Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, could change the complexion of the issue and may point to Brady being forced to actually miss the first quarter of the 2015 NFL season.
"While not spelled out in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the NFLPA will concede, we're told, that players have a duty to 'reasonably cooperate' with investigations," writes Florio. "Ted Wells explained in persuasive fashion during his Angry Ted Wells conference call from Tuesday that more-than-reasonable concessions were made to Brady, in order to protect the privacy of the contents of his phone."
Here's Wells' statement from that conference call:
"I want to be crystal clear," Wells said Tuesday. "I told Mr. Brady and his agent I was willing not to take possession of the phones. I said, 'I don't want to see any private information.' I said, you keep the phone, you, the agent, Mr. Yee you can look at the phone and you can give me documents that are responsive to this investigation and I will take your word that you have given me what's responsive.' And they still refused."
Brady willing sat down with Wells for an interview at the outset of the investigation, but then refused to cooperate further with the requests of Wells' team.
Kessler, Brady and Co. will seemingly have a difficult time proving through the appeal process that Wells' request was not reasonable - of course, the term "reasonably cooperate" is very general and subject to a wide variety of interpretations.
Separating Brady's decision not to cooperate fully with Wells from the remainder of the reasoning for his suspension will be Kessler's most important undertaking if he's to be successful in his efforts to get the suspension reduced.
