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Jonathan Tucker headed to higher court on homicide charges

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What’s Up, NEPA?/Good Eats And More!

<p>HOUSTON &#8212; It&#8217;s a neat, tidy narrative. All it needs is Tom Brady to provide the perfect ending.</p><p>NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell bans Brady for four games for his part in &#8220;Deflategate,&#8221; and Brady returns more motivated than ever. Brady, already an all-time great quarterback, delivers one of his finest seasons at age 39. The Patriots lose once in 12 regular-season games with Brady under center and win the AFC championship.</p><p>Then, for the crowning achievement, Brady beats the Falcons on Sunday for his record fifth Super Bowl title. Afterward, Brady accepts the championship trophy from Goodell, who hadn&#8217;t shown up in Foxborough, Mass., when the Patriots beat the Steelers for the AFC championship two weekends ago.</p><p>It would be the final chapter in a saga of redemption and, perhaps, revenge. One problem: Brady hasn&#8217;t played along with that plot all season, at least not publicly, and he&#8217;s not going to help feed that storyline now that the Patriots are at the Super Bowl.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve moved on,&#8221; Brady said this week. &#8220;I focus on positive things in my life. I&#8217;m not worried about postgame (with Goodell) or anything like that.&#8221;</p><p>There is some circumstantial evidence that Brady would gain some personal satisfaction from taking the trophy from Goodell.</p><p>In November, Brady starred in a TV advertisement for a national shoe company in which he indirectly (and comically) suggested that he was punished for something that didn&#8217;t happen. That&#8217;s the closest Brady has come to publicly addressing the issue since he was suspended.</p><p>By contrast Brady&#8217;s father, Tom Sr., hasn&#8217;t held back.</p><p>The father said in a TV interview last week that Goodell &#8220;doesn&#8217;t belong on any stage that Tom Brady is on&#8221; because of his lack of ethics. Tom Sr. said Goodell&#8217;s behavior in the matter was &#8220;beyond reprehensible&#8221; and that the commissioner had to &#8220;lie his way out&#8221; from the scandal.</p><p>But the Patriots quarterback said this week that his father&#8217;s feelings are his own. And it turns out another personal issue may be on Brady&#8217;s mind more than his suspension: CSNNE reported Tuesday that Brady&#8217;s mother, Galynn, has been dealing with undisclosed health issues for the past 18 months.</p><p>That family crisis may explain why Brady appeared to tear up while talking about his father during Monday&#8217;s media event. The next day, at the Patriots team hotel, Brady said he got emotional because his parents haven&#8217;t been to many games this year.</p><p>&#8220;You just have different things that your family goes through in the course of your life, and it&#8217;s been a challenging year for my family, just for some personal reasons,&#8221; Brady said, before the report about his mother&#8217;s illness. &#8220;It&#8217;ll be nice to have everyone here watching us this weekend. My mom and dad have been so supportive my entire life, and it&#8217;s nice to be here to show them and try to make them proud.&#8221;</p><p>Brady said his mother hasn&#8217;t attended a Patriots game this season and his father has been to one, which the quarterback said is &#8220;very atypical&#8221; for his parents.</p><p>&#8220;They are going to be here this weekend, which I am excited about,&#8221; Brady said. &#8220;So it will be nice to see everybody. I have a big group coming.&#8221;</p><p>Brady&#8217;s family will be among the people watching to see if he can become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls. Doing so would add to his already-great legacy and maybe wash away some of the stain left on his reputation by Deflategate.</p><p>The NFL&#8217;s investigation concluded that it was &#8220;more probable than not&#8221; that Brady played a role in deflating game footballs to levels not allowed by the rules. The NFL fined the Patriots$1 million and docked them two draft picks.</p><p>Goodell suspended Brady for four games. Brady appealed in federal court and lost before he eventually dropped the case.</p><p>The way the Patriots see it, the episode should not have blemished Brady&#8217;s reputation. Franchise owner Robert Kraft has been outspoken in his defense of Brady and criticisms of Goodell, the commissioner he had once supported.</p><p>&#8220;Everyone wants to protect their family,&#8221; Kraft said this week. &#8220;I think our family was involved, or accused of being involved, in something that was mishandled and inappropriate (and) became a big distraction. Leadership is about stepping up when it&#8217;s the appropriate time and then making sure everyone knows that we&#8217;re all on the same page. Sometimes when you&#8217;re in complicated situations in a business, people start pointing fingers, and we want to assure everyone that we&#8217;re all together.&#8221;</p><p>The Patriots survived without Brady. They won three of four games while starting two different quarterbacks.</p><p>&#8220;The team was 3-1 at that point, so I didn&#8217;t want to screw it up,&#8221; Brady said.</p><p>The Patriots have thrived since Brady&#8217;s return. He posted the third-best quarterback rating of his career (112.2) while throwing 28 touchdowns against two interceptions. Brady&#8217;s interception rate (0.5 percent) was the best of his career.</p><p>If Deflategate provided any additional motivation, Brady isn&#8217;t saying.</p><p>&#8220;I always have motivation,&#8221; he said. &#8220;There was a time when the Patriots weren&#8217;t a very good team and no one gave us a lot of respect. Teammates like Rodney (Harrison) that always said, &#8216;They don&#8217;t respect us! They don&#8217;t respect us!&#8217; I think that was always a good metric for us.</p><p>&#8220;I think feeling that way and feeling like you need to earn other people&#8217;s respect is a great source of motivation for me. I think my main motivation is representing my family, representing my team, representing my teammates, representing our fans.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Michael Cunningham</p><p>The Atlanta Journal-Constitution</p></bylineMeta></div>

Family, not ‘Deflategate,’ on Tom Brady’s mind