Even Eagles not immune to NFL's 'over-discipline'

Everyone had better be careful now.

This is the reality of an NFL leadership group that just suspended the league's most famous and accomplished star for favoring a softer football and failing to come clean about his preference.

This is the consequence of Roger Goodell's Inspector Javert act not just against Tom Brady but Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick, and the entire New England Patriots organization: a first-round draft pick, a fourth-round draft pick, a $1 million fine, the loss of Brady for four games next season. This is the world of the new National Football League, where Goodell pays a handpicked investigator millions of dollars to produce a 243-page report full of forensic data on air pressure eight months after the commissioner couldn't be bothered to track down a security video of Ray Rice punching out his prospective wife in a casino elevator.

Everyone had better be careful now, and everyone includes Jeffrey Lurie, Chip Kelly, and the Eagles.

Yes, this is the new NFL, where following the reasoning behind the ever-increasing punishments that Goodell and the league office dole out is becoming a party game, where everyone, including one of the league's most esteemed owners, is fair game.

Before Goodell and NFL executive vice president Troy Vincent made Brady's suspension official, the speculation about its length ranged from the appropriate (one game) to the ridiculous (the settled-upon four games) to the absolutely insane (a full season). And all those guesses appeared credible. Why? Because there was no precedent for the league's suspending someone for such a thing, and even if there had been, there was no guarantee Goodell and Vincent would have used it to guide them. And lo and behold, they didn't stop at Brady, even if the Wells report did.

It's tempting to think that - as Kelly implements his philosophy of seeking out players whom he deems to be humbler and more team-oriented in their attitudes - the Eagles might be immune to a fate similar to the Patriots'. They won't be. Goodell and the league have created a world in which he has near total power and discretion to sanction players, and he apparently doesn't have to distinguish between ethical breaches on the field and nefarious actions off it, but now he's reaching higher.

Rice cracked Janay Palmer-Rice with that left hook, and Goodell initially suspended him for two games, and the subsequent firestorm over that decision changed everything. Goodell and the league appeared to have no moral code. The pendulum had to swing the other way. It will strike every team sooner or later. It won't take much, even here - another racial slur from Riley Cooper, another positive PED test for Lane Johnson, a new transgression or two that no one can foresee now.

"We're in the 'PRV Era' of the NFL - the Post Rice Video Era," said former NFL executive and agent Andrew Brandt, who analyzes the league for ESPN and teaches at Villanova. "Ever since that TMZ drop of the video on Sept. 8, we've been in this new era of over-discipline rather than the specter of under-discipline.

"So you have Ray Rice. Then you have Adrian Peterson, who pled out to a misdemeanor, getting an indefinite suspension. Greg Hardy's accuser didn't even show up [in court], and he gets 10 games. It's the same concept going on right now: We're going to over-discipline, and if we get to court and we suffer some stumbles there with arbitration, so be it. But we're not going soft on rules."

No one is arguing that Goodell has to be beholden to civil and criminal court rulings in meting out punishment to players, and no one is arguing that Brady deserved no reprimand at all. But the only pattern that has held up throughout Goodell's tenure is this: If you bow before him, if you knuckle under, he shows mercy, no matter the severity or superficiality of the offense.

Rice was contrite and got two games. Brady thumbed his nose at the league and got four games, and the residue of Spygate and the Patriots' collective arrogance emboldened Goodell to go after the entire franchise. Never mind that Goodell already had punished the Patriots for Spygate. Never mind that smugness - while infuriating, while obviously a driving force behind the public's satisfaction with Brady's suspension - isn't contrary to any law or league rule. Never mind that Brady was the only player whom the Wells report determined to be "more probable than not" to have been involved in Deflategate.

"That's a shot across the bow to all owners," Brandt said. "If you're not going to take integrity seriously, it's going to come back to haunt you."

That approach sounds great, as if Goodell were some kind of superhero in a summer blockbuster. Roger Goodell: Guardian of Integrity. Except Goodell's primary concern isn't integrity. It's image, and as long as the NFL keeps making money, he can turn every anthill into an Alp no matter the cost to his credibility. This is the new PRV NFL, and it's open season on everyone.

@MikeSielski