The real question...where does this leave the NFL?
It leaves the NFL with mud on it's face - again. They didn't have their ducks in a row, as usual, and a judge of their choosing, in their own city, slapped them down. Can you imagine a NYC judge siding with Tom fucking Brady? A Patriot? A Boston sports hero? A NYC local siding with a Boston sports hero? That's how fucking bad the NFL is on this one.
Look, I believe Tom Brady, like every NFL QB, probably instructed his locker room guys on how he likes his footballs. I don't believe he actually stuck the needle in the ball and deflated them himself, and that's what it would take to find him guilty of anything sinister. The NFL tried to hammer him for not cooperating, for suspiciously breaking his phone so it couldn't be used as evidence. They tried to make an example out of the Golden Boy to show the rest of the lesser players that they mean business. Fail. The judge says that's not enough, and the NFL didn't go through their process in a way that could convince an outsider that the punishment was warranted. If you're gonna set up someone as huge as Tom Brady, you better do it very well. You better have a smoking gun. The NFL didn't even have a drawing of a smoking gun. Furthermore, the judge ruled that Tom Brady had no idea that even knowing about deflated footballs warrants punishment. So with that, whether Brady knew or not, he didn't know what kind of punishment, if any, there was anyway. What a clusterfuck.
The bad part of this is that another precedent has been set that this commissioner is inept and can be defeated. I expect more and more players will be taking the NFL to court over everything. And maybe rightfully so, but it's gonna get monotonous.
The owners need to step in and put a stop to the commish being the judge, jury, and executioner.