The NFL announced on Tuesday that commissioner Roger Goodell upheld Tom Brady's four-game suspension. In the announcement, the league emphasized that new information disclosed by Brady before his June 23 hearing swayed the ruling.
According to the league, on or shortly before March 6, the day that Brady was to meet with Ted Wells and other investigators, Brady had his cell phone destroyed. Brady had used the phone for four months and sent nearly 10,000 text messages in that time, according to the NFL. None of the messages could be retrieved from the device, the league said.
The league also noted that Brady did not disclose until June 18 that his phone had been destroyed, almost four months after investigators originally asked for electronic information from Brady.
In its announcement of Goodell's ruling, the league wrote: "Based on the Wells Report and the evidence presented at the hearing, Commissioner Goodell concluded in his decision that Brady was aware of, and took steps to support, the actions of other team employees to deflate game footballs below the levels called for by the NFL's Official Playing Rules. The commissioner found that Brady’s deliberate destruction of potentially relevant evidence went beyond a mere failure to cooperate in the investigation and supported a finding that he had sought to hide evidence of his own participation in the underlying scheme to alter the footballs."
During the appeal hearing, Brady explained it was common for him to have his cell phone and its SIM cards destroyed when he gets a new cell phone. However, within Goodell's 20-page decision, it was noted that the cell phone Brady used prior to the one that was destroyed on March 6 was available to be reviewed by investigators and not destroyed.
