Why the Silence, Tom Brady?
Ever since Roger Goodell did his best Cartman impression and told Tom Brady to respect his authori-tah, Patriots fans and girls who like Brady because he’s Giselle’s husband alike have shot back at the NFL, employing methods as diverse as a “Free Tom Brady” beer, a rally at Gillette Stadium that went out with a whimper instead of a bang (you don’t really think people would ditch a Memorial Day Weekend barbecue to sit in a parking lot, do you?), and, well, getting arrested at NFL headquarters protesting the suspension. The Patriots, too, have fired back at the league with statements, websites, and interviews defying the league’s guilty verdict, until, of course, Robert Kraft tapped out last week, never to return to the ring again. With Brady’s appeal being one of the last dominos to fall in this godforsaken Scooby-Doo episode of an offseason, people are starting to wonder why Tom Brady seems to be MIA in the outrage department, content to let his lawyers and agents do the talking.
And it’s not just folks like you and me and Jimbo, either – Sports Illustrated’s Greg Bedard and CSNNE’s Tom Curran, among others, have been on the air wondering aloud why the Patriots quarterback seems to be taking the punches.
Why hasn’t Brady fought back in the press? Or said anything at all, really? Why hasn’t he come out swinging in defense of his own dignity? Why won’t he tell us outright that he didn’t cheat? Why hasn’t he painted his face and stood from a mountaintop with a broadsword and roared “They can take our lives, but they can never take our FREEDOM!!!”?
Elementary, my dear Patriots Nation. While everyone who’s tweeted #FreeBrady since his suspension was dished out would love to see him extend a big ol’ Johnny Cash middle finger to The Man, there’s a few very practical reasons he’s gone dark lately.
Aside from observing the first rules of the most important lesson you’ll ever learn, according to Robert DeNiro (“Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut”), Jeffrey Kessler (Brady’s lawyer) has more likely than not told Tom to maintain 100% radio silence. The reason? If this suspension is upheld by the league, as I’ve previously theorized, it’s heading to court. And I’m no lawyer, or even a Mona Lisa Vito, but it stands to reason that if Brady were to call a press conference and double down on his innocence, that’ll surely become part of any kind of court proceedings. Especially, you know, since a declaration of innocence would be on tape, on TV, on the air, on the Internet, and readily accessible to any lawyer with an iPhone that needed it. That’s one headache Kessler and Brady more than likely don’t want to deal with.
Also, on a simpler level, Robert Kraft doubled down too, and look how that worked out. After spitting fire for months, Kraft eventually tapped out and declared that he would bow out of the fight and take some of the stiffest punishments in NFL history.
The simplest explanation, though? Easy. If Brady were to go on a tear right now, telling Sports Illustrated or ESPN or whoever your news outlet of choice is that he’s innocent, beyond the shadow of a doubt, like so many Patriots fans believe he is, and then his appeal collapses in court? He’ll look absolutely freaking ridiculous, and his reputation shatters faster than a drunk girl’s iPhone screen hitting a dance floor.
In that scenario, what if Tom Terrific came out and swore until he was blue in the face that he didn’t have anything to do with any of this nonsense, and that he’s always played within the rules, and that he can look America square in the eye and tell us he’s not a cheater and never has been, and then a court upholds even a portion of his suspension?
He’s toast. He’s a liar AND a cheater, a Lance Armstrong or Alex Rodriguez, forever damned in the court of public opinion even if he wins 10 more Super Bowls, with every playoff record, every win, every literally history-rewriting season written and remembered as a fraud first, and a good football player second.
You don’t need a PR degree to imagine that kind of radioactive fallout being an avoid-at-all-costs absolute-worst-case scenario.
By never ratting on his friends and always keeping his mouth shut, Tom Terrific is keeping an ace up his sleeve, in the form of what’s admittedly a cop-out, but could go something like this: the suspension gets reduced to 2 games, and the spin on the decision is “I told my guys to take the air pressure rules to the absolute limit, and in this situation, they failed, but I shouldn’t have told them to toe the line with the rulebook. I’m sorry for anything I did to compromise the game, that’s not who I am, that’s not what I’m about, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure this never happens again.”
(Not too bad for off the top of my head PR jingoisms, eh?)
Best-case scenario, the suspension gets wiped and everyone from Tom Brady to the five states north of New York City gets their faith rewarded. In the meantime, and given the unlikelihood of that actually happening, keeping an ace up your sleeve is the smartest thing he can do.