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Robert Kraft has clearly taken sides — against Roger Goodell

Patriots owner Robert Kraft and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell have seen friendlier days.stephan savoia/AP/file 2014/Associated Press

Back in 2013, Patriots owner Robert Kraft was interviewed for a profile on Roger Goodell by ESPN’s “Outside the Lines.” Kraft was asked about the commissioner’s history of draconian punishments and his reputation among NFL players for going too far with discipline.

This was before Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, but by that time Goodell had levied heavy punishments against the Saints for Bountygate, against Dallas and Washington for violating a nonexistent salary cap, and against Ben Roethlisberger for a sexual assault case in which no charges were ever filed.

“I really don’t focus on how players view the commissioner,” Kraft said then. “All I know is he’s very tough, but very fair, and he’s doing a job, and it’s not going to help him win popularity contests. I want him to do things just the way he’s doing them.”

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Three years later, it’s now the Patriots’ turn to be in Goodell’s crosshairs, and Kraft has changed his tune. He had the Patriots’ lawyer, Daniel Goldberg, file an amicus brief with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Wednesday, urging the court to accept Tom Brady’s request for an en banc appeal.

Brady had his four-game suspension reinstated by a 2-1 decision in the Second Circuit last month, and filed an appeal for a rehearing Monday.

Kraft didn’t quite go full Al Davis — Davis is the only NFL owner to ever sue the league — but he entered the same ZIP code, via his attorney.

“The panel majority’s opinion . . . endorsed the outcome of a highly manipulated and fundamentally unfair process designed and used by the Commissioner to reach and justify a predetermined outcome in violation of the CBA and this Court’s precedents,” Goldberg wrote on behalf of Kraft and the Patriots.

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So now we have an NFL owner slamming his own commissioner, arguing that a player’s rights were violated, and pleading with the court to side with the NFL Players Association.

As if Deflategate weren’t crazy enough.

Kraft’s displeasure with Goodell and his handling of Deflategate is well-known, but Kraft’s emotions seemed to cool in March when he spoke about Goodell at the owners meetings.

“Putting personal situations aside, I think he’s done a very good job,” Kraft said then. “He’s worked hard, the health of the league has not been better. We have our issue, that we don’t think has been handled well, but it is what it is.”

But now Brady has his back against the wall, facing long odds of even getting his appeal heard, let alone winning it. Less than .03 percent of cases in the Second Circuit were granted an en banc hearing in the Second Circuit from 2000-10.

So Team Brady is putting on the full-court press — hiring famed attorney Ted Olson, going on a media tour Monday to proclaim the worthiness of their case, and now Kraft going against his league and his commissioner to support the rights of his worker.

If there were any doubts about whose side Kraft was on, Tuesday’s filing should settle it.

The arguments set forth in the brief are familiar: Brady’s appeal in front of Goodell last June was fundamentally unfair; Brady should have been afforded the right to view Ted Wells’s notes in interviews with the NFL officials who observed the halftime testing of football; Goodell improperly changed the basis of his punishment when he cited the destruction of Brady’s cellphone for upholding the four-game suspension; the NFL mischaracterized Brady’s testimony; dozens of scientists have debunked Exponent’s conclusions, and so on.

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Goldberg took some nice potshots at the league in his footnotes, as well.

“From the outset of this matter the League’s conduct reflects less a search for the truth than pursuit of a pre-determined result and defense of a report,” he wrote. “In addition, at the very outset of the investigation the League leaked materially incorrect PSI information and refused to correct it for months, allowing public misperceptions to fester.”

(Of course, the brief never quite explained what “the deflator” means, or why the Patriots refused to let Wells interview John Jastremski and Jim McNally a second time, but we digress.)

The brief also makes sure to highlight for the Second Circuit that Brady’s case is important not just for the Patriots but for all arbitration hearings.

The only way Brady’s appeal will be granted is if seven of the 13 judges believe this case to be of “exceptional importance” — a phrase Goldberg used in the very first sentence of the brief.

“This case presents an issue of exceptional importance — the extent to which settled precedent and fundamental fairness operate as a check on the broad authority of arbitrators,” Goldberg wrote. “[The] impact of the majority opinion is not limited to professional football. It threatens to undermine vital principles governing arbitration of collective bargaining agreements throughout the national economy.”

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Olson’s appeal brief Monday highlighted the fact that Goodell changed the basis for the punishment, and ignored penalties for a supposed equipment violation. Goldberg’s brief highlights that Brady’s appeal in front of Goodell was fundamentally unfair.

That’s a tag-team effort worthy of the WWE.

Goldberg’s brief is no doubt convincing, but the judges will surely take into account the extreme bias Kraft and the Patriots have in support of Brady.

Still, the fact that Kraft had his attorney file a brief slamming his own commissioner and defending the rights of a player is newsworthy enough. The craziness of Deflategate continues to get even crazier.