Does Tom Brady's All-Star Legal Team Stand a Chance?

Tom Brady has officially lawyered up.

Already represented by agent Don Yee, the suspended New England Patriots quarterback added notorious NFL combatant Jeffrey Kessler to his legal team this week as he and the Players Association initiate their appeal of the four-game suspension the league handed down for what it termed "conduct detrimental to the integrity of the NFL."

Before reviewing the key arguments Brady, Yee and Kessler will make in partnership with the NFLPA, a little background on who exactly will be firing back at the folks residing at 345 Park Avenue...

Jeffrey Kessler

Louis Lanzano/Associated Press

You may remember Kessler from such sports legal cases as McNeil, et al. v. NFL, et al. (1992), Sprewell v. NBA (1997), Oscar Pistorius v. IAAF (2008), Brady vs. NFL (2011 lockout), and appeals for Bountygate, Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson. 

The McNeil suit paved the way for unrestricted free agency as we know it today, Latrell Sprewell had his suspension lifted, the Pistorius case allowed the double-amputee runner to compete in the Olympics, the first Brady case ended the work stoppage before any games were cancelled, and suspensions were vacated or reduced in all three appeals. 

So yeah, Kessler, who is a partner at the international law firm Winston & Strawn, has become the league's worst enemy and an antitrust superhero. 

"He's a legal powerhouse," University of Toledo law professor Geoffrey Rapp told Bleacher Report. "If you're playing a high-stakes game, you want the best team on the field. And this would be the equivalent of that from a legal perspective." 

As ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio points out, the real shame here might only be it took Brady this long to hire Kessler, who has served as the NFLPA's go-to outside counsel since before No. 12 was in the league and has a Mayweather-like record in these battles:

"

It still would have been better for Brady to seek—and to implement—Kessler’s advice from the get go. Kessler would have nudged Brady in directions that would have established a better foundation for success on appeal or in court.

Kessler also may have been able to cajole Brady into accepting the league’s offer to allow Brady’s legal team to lift from his phone and email account any messages that may be relevant to the investigation, without supervision or involvement of the NFL.

"

Better late than never. 

"Brady's gone to the best," added Rapp, "which suggests that he really is willing to fight here and this isn't just posturing."

Don Yee

Within hours of the announcement of the suspension, Brady's agent fired back at the league, stating "the discipline is ridiculous and has no legitimate basis" and that in his opinion the outcome was pre-determined. 

"There is no evidence that Tom directed footballs be set at pressures below the allowable limits," added Yee. "In fact, the evidence shows Tom clearly emphasized that footballs be set at pressures within the rules. Tom also cooperated with the investigation and answered every question presented to him."

He went on to call into question the integrity of the game before suggesting the Wells Report (which contains profanity) "will be exposed as an incredibly frail exercise in fact-finding and logic.

"The NFL has a well-documented history of making poor disciplinary decisions that often are overturned when truly independent and neutral judges or arbitrators preside, and a former federal judge has found the commissioner has abused his discretion in the past, so this outcome does not surprise me."

While Brady has dodged anything related to Deflategate over the past week, Yee has been everywhere and hasn't held back in defense of his client. 

The outspoken Yee, who represents only one other player—Max Unger—with a Pro Bowl on his resume, has called for the abolishment of the draft and salaries at the college level. And considering he's worked with Brady since his Michigan days—since before he became pick No. 199 and an unlikely star in New England—it's safe to say he'll have the man's back until they've exhausted every option in the book. 

Daniel Goldberg

WellsReportContext.com

Goldberg isn't representing Brady, but the work he's doing to represent the Patriots during this process obviously could have an impact on Brady's fate. Goldberg and his firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, helped the team launch an entire website devoted to battling the findings contained in the Wells Report, which was used as a basis for the league's decision to fine and strip draft picks from the Pats and suspend Brady. 

The team's official Twitter account even distributed a link to the newly registered WellsReportContext.com, which contains the following introduction from Goldberg: 

"

The conclusions of the Wells Report are, at best, incomplete, incorrect and lack context. The Report dismisses the scientific explanation for the natural loss of psi of the Patriots footballs by inexplicably rejecting the Referee’s recollection of what gauge he used in his pregame inspection. Texts acknowledged to be attempts at humor and exaggeration are nevertheless interpreted as a plot to improperly deflate footballs, even though none of them refer to any such plot. There is no evidence that Tom Brady preferred footballs that were lower than 12.5 psi and no evidence anyone even thought that he did. All the extensive evidence which contradicts how the texts are interpreted by the investigators is simply dismissed as “not plausible.” Inconsistencies in logic and evidence are ignored.

"

Also on the site, Roderick MacKinnon, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, disagrees with the scientific conclusion in the Wells Report that "no set of credible environmental or physical factors” could have resulted in the Patriots' footballs losing a significant amount of air.

Other challenges—such as the one that team employee Jim McNally called himself "Deflator" because he was trying to lose weight—are less convincing, but MacKinnon's claims, among others, are strong and will certainly be used as part of the appeals process. 

Could they win this appeal? 

Jamie Squire/Getty Images

If your legal team is strong enough, anything is possible.

"Brady’s team is unreal,” a source texted ESPN's Adam Schefter (via Doug Keyd NESN). “Talented, big-name lawyers: Yee, Kessler, etc. Prediction=won’t miss a game."

It helps, too, that there are legitimate areas in the Wells Report in which holes can be poked. An entire website is now devoted to poking said holes, and it's important to consider the language behind Brady's suspension. 

"Conduct detrimental to the integrity of the NFL."

No smoking gun exists here, and it appears Brady is being punished at least partly for refusing to fully cooperate with Wells' investigation. 

In the league's initial media release on the punishment, NFL executive president Troy Vincent cited "the failure of Tom Brady to produce any electronic evidence (emails, texts, etc.), despite being offered extraordinary safeguards by the investigators to protect unrelated personal information" as a factor, while noting Brady and other key witnesses "were not fully candid during the investigation."

It really doesn't seem as though Brady was suspended for his alleged role in coordinating the deflation of footballs so much as he was suspended for stalling the investigation, regardless of his intentions. So it's entirely possible that by simply sharing more information, the four-time Super Bowl champion will have his sentence reduced if not vacated. 

"The consensus I've seen is the real offense here on Brady's part was refusing to hand over his phone and cooperate fully," said Rapp. "What's behind some of the punishment is a process concern on the part of the NFL."

Article 46 of the collective bargaining agreement gives Brady the ability to appeal, but commissioner Roger Goodell still has the right to decide who will hear the appeal. The Players Association has requested a neutral arbitrator, which is likely to help Brady's case considering the connections that have been drawn between Wells and the league office. 

If in the appeal process lawyers representing Brady and the union can raise doubt regarding the science of under-inflated balls, or the gauges used to measure said balls, or the chain of custody surrounding the balls, or if they can shed light on a potential sting operation between the league and the Indianapolis Colts, it could be grounds for a neutral arbitrator to rule there isn't enough hard evidence in place.

And if that's how things play out, Brady's free.

But even if it isn't, there's a realistic chance Brady could have his suspension reduced by increasing his level of cooperation or having Kessler and Co. separate the player's alleged actions from those of team employees like McNally and John Jastremski.

Additionally, his lawyers could use precedents such as the two-game suspension Ray Rice received for an ugly domestic violence incident in order to argue this punishment was both arbitrary and over the top. 

Considering the NFLPA's Thursday statement almost immediately referred to "the NFL’s history of inconsistency and arbitrary decisions in disciplinary matters," it's safe to conclude that'll be a major claim.

With all of those factors in play and Kessler and Yee on his side, don't be surprised if we see Brady in a Patriots uniform long before the sixth week of the 2015 regular season. 

Brad Gagnon has covered the NFL for Bleacher Report since 2012.

Follow @Brad_Gagnon