Daniel Nash stood behind a courtroom lectern on the 17th ... Dalton Jerseyfloor of a federal court house here and tried to argue the NFL's case in suspending Tom Brady for four games in the deflate-gate saga.

Yet as the attorney made his presentation he kept getting interrupted by Judge Richard M. Berman, who repeatedly engaged in direct counterarguments against Nash, sometimes even warning that legal precedent suggested the NFL could lose its case.

It happened over and over [url=http://www.officialbengalsnflshop.com/WOMENS_YOUTH_ANTHONY_MUNOZ_JERSEY.htm... Nash's 63 minutes in front of the judge and with each Berman question or counterpoint, none of them positive for the NFL, Nash began taking a small, but telling, step back from the lectern, like a boxer retreating in the face of an incoming haymaker.

He may have expected to duel NFL Players Association attorney Jeffrey Kessler here. He probably wasn't expecting the judge to be even tougher on him and it figuratively rocked him.

Berman reminded everyone last week not to read too [url=http://www.officialbengalsnflshop.com/WOMENS_YOUTH_BOOMER_ESIASON_JERSEY.ht... into the tone and frequency of his questions to lawyers because it wouldn't necessarily reveal his feeling on the case. This week he didn't repeat the request.

Not that it would've mattered.

Berman could still rule for the NFL and could just be playing Devil's Advocate – this is a United States District Court, not a political debate – but it sure didn't feel that way here on Wednesday morning. One example among many?

"There has to be some basic process of fairness that needs to be followed," Berman argued to Nash after the NFL e[url=http://www.officialcardinalsmlbshop.com/authentic-20-lou-brock-jersey.html... Brock Jersey[/url]xplained why it failed to allow Brady to question certain witnesses, notably general counsel Jeff Pash, who also co-wrote the disputed Ted Wells report about deflated footballs.

When Nash tried to argue that Pash wasn't that involved and was more of an editor, Berman, like this was a cross-examination, pointed to an NFL press release that referred to Pash as "co-lead." Nash, stepped back from that lectern, again tried to minimize it as just a press release.

"Well," Berman [url=http://www.officialcardinalsmlbshop.com/authentic-13-matt-carpenter-jersey.... "it's not my press release. You all wrote it."

This is how it went, over and over. For the NFL, this was, if not, ugly, then at least concerning. For the NFLPA, well, its 10-person legal team nearly skipped out of court after making an impassioned multi-point claim against the decision by commissioner Roger Goodell to uphold Brady's discipline.

Kessler and the NFLPA argued that the league never provided notice to Brady that "general knowledge" of an infraction could lead to a suspension, that it didn't allow a fair arbitration system, that Goodell knew he was compromised as an arbiter because he had previously praised the findings of Wells' report, that the commissioner improperly increased the findings against Brady from "generally aware" to a full participant in a "scheme" based on no authority and no additional information, that the science of Wells' report was junk, that the NFL didn't provide attorney notes to the NFLPA in violation of federal standards and … so on and so on.