UPDATED: 3:18 p.m.
FOXBORO -- As it turns out, the Deflategate saga will not pass an important checkpoint on Wednesday. The New England Patriots will, indeed, have Tom Brady on the field for their two joint practices with the Saints in West Virginia, and thus their preparation for the 2015 season will not be affected by the ongoing scandal.
Yet.
Brady missed the Pats' practice session today as he was in New York for NFL/NFLPA settlement talks with Judge Berman. The original plan was for him to stay over and attend Wednesday's oral arguments on his appeal. But when the settlement talks -- to the surprise of no one -- went nowhere, our pal Bert Breer said on Twitter that Berman told Brady he didn't have to stay, that he could head to West Virginia to rejoin the Patriots.
Which probably made Bill Belichick a pretty happy man. These next two days at The Greenbrier are the most important practices of the summer -- the ones Belichick and his staff plan for, because the number and quality of repetitions trumps even the preseason games -- and it's safe to say he wasn't pleased the first was going to go off without Brady. This is not what’s best for the football team.
So the day of reckoning was avoided. For now.
Even so, it's easy to image that Belichick's seeing red. Sixteen seasons coaching the team and he’s spent most of them hearing about rivals’ whispered, ankle-biting accusations. This “chatter”, to borrow a word from the Wells Report, has been epidemic.
New England Patriots
One can argue that people wouldn’t talk if there was nothing to talk about. One can also argue that apple-polishing reputation assassins in GM and coaching positions wouldn’t be e-mailing the league office or crying to the refs if they weren’t losing, constantly, to Belichick.
A partial list off the top of my head of grievances uttered, re-uttered and -- for some -- acted upon by the league office.
-- Patriots defensive backs being too aggressive (rule change ensues).
-- Disregarding a memo on taping opposition coaches from the sidelines during games (chaos ensues, draft picks are lost, a legacy is discredited).
-- Headset troubles at Gillette Stadium.
-- Confusing formations (rule change in 2015).
-- Losing a game in New York because Rex Ryan dropped a dime to the refs about a field-goal rule being broken . . . the same rule the Jets themselves broke earlier in the game.
And now the NFL has Belichick’s quarterback's future -- and his team's -- in limbo because it claims he ran a football deflation scheme and declared him guilty of murdering the game’s integrity.
But the body -- in the form of the allegedly deflated footballs -- may have just been in a coma. (Ever hear of the IDEAL GAS LAW???) We’ll never know. And why? Because the sharps in the league office got overexcited and bungled the investigation.
No matter. The book got thrown at Brady anyway. And the team's future remains uncertain -- even though Brady will be with his teammates on Wednesday after all -- because no one knows how this thing is going to play out.
Brady and Belichick spent several minutes in a 1-on-1 conversation after practice Monday. They might have been talking about anything. I would be willing to wager, though, that some of the conversation related to how things are going to progress over the next few weeks.
The season opener is 22 days away. If nothing changes, Brady’s exile from the team begins in 17 days.
It’s getting a little more real now.