Zolak: Roger Goodell Picked Wrong Fight With Brady DeflateGate Punishment
BOSTON (CBS) -- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's decision to put time and energy into what became known as DeflateGate took him away from time better spent tackling the iceberg of problems plaguing the NFL, said 98.5. The Sports Hub's Scott Zolak, a former Patriots quarterback.
"I lived a life with these footballs, and I know how minuscule the factor that it had on the ability to throw the football," Zolak told WBZ-TV.
"The things that are going on in this league and the problems that this Commissioner now find that he has in this National Football League -- the guns, the violence, the domestic abuse -- there's so many other things out there," he said.
U.S. District Judge Richard Berman issued his decision Thursday, ruling to vacate the NFL's four-game suspension of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
Zolak predicted that the outcome would be a vacated suspension, and said even Judge Berman was reluctant to issue a ruling, hoping that both sides would just come to an agreement.
"We thought this ruling was going to come down two days ago and he even extended to the end of the week again, which seemed like one more shot at this," he said.
Zolak says the relatively routine practice of minimizing or vacating a ruling by the league speaks to the flaws in how players are held accountable.
"We see this every year, we see this with Ray Rice, we see this with Adrian Peterson -- look at those two cases and what those two gentlemen did and how their things were vacated or how their suspensions were minimized" he said.
"We're dealing with a guy here that likes a football a certain way, and there's a low limit, and there's a high limit. And this thing really turned into a witch hunt," he added.
Scott Zolak is the Patriots radio analyst and co-host of the Zolak & Bertrand show on 98.5 The Sports Hub.
