Tom Brady made 'generous' offer to settle Deflategate, NFL shot him down

NFLPA's DeMaurice Smith says star QB refused to throw Pats employees 'under the bus'

If you've been keeping track at home, then you probably already know that Deflategate has been dominating NFL headlines for more than 16 months now.

It didn't have to be that way, though: According to NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, Deflategate could've ended a long time ago.

During a recent interview on the Dan Patrick Show, Smith revealed that Tom Brady tried to end Deflategate by making an "incredibly generous" settlement offer to the NFL, but the league shot him down.

"Tom, I think, made a great offer to settle these cases," Smith said. "The league didn't want to do it because he refused to throw his trainers under the bus. Look, Tom's a stand-up guy, and I think that he made a settlement offer to resolve this, the league chose not to take it, and that's where we are."

The obvious question here is: What exactly was Brady's offer?

Unfortunately, we'll probably never know because Smith wasn't willing to divulge anything specific about Brady's proposed settlement.

"I don't want to go into details, but it was an incredibly generous offer to resolve this," Smith said.

Smith was also vague about why the league turned Brady's offer down.

"The league asked for something that no man should agree to do," Smith said.

One other thing that's not exactly clear is when Brady his "incredibly generous" offer. If it was any time in the past few months, then it's not a shock at all that the NFL turned it down. Roger Goodell made it clear in April that there would be no settlement talks following the failed talks that took place in the summer of 2015.

Settlement or not, Smith just wants Deflategate to end.

"Isn't it a strange world: We just got through the draft, we're going into OTAs, it's 2016 and we're talking about the first half of the AFC Championship game two years ago," Smith said.

The end should be coming soon since Brady's running out of legal options. On May 23, Brady filed an appeal for a second hearing by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the court grants his en banc appeal, then it will re-hear the case and Brady would have to get seven of the 13 judges to side with him.

If the second hearing isn't granted, Brady would then have one final option: The Patriots quarterback could try to take his case to the Supreme Court.