NEW YORK — A federal judge took a peacemaker’s role Tuesday, urging New England quarterback Tom Brady and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to find common ground to settle differences before he lowers the gavel on a controversy over deflated footballs.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman asked Brady and Goodell to “engage in further good faith settlement efforts” a day before they meet in Manhattan federal court for the first time.

Brady was not at the Patriots’ training camp Tuesday.

Two weeks ago, the NFL sued its players union, asking Berman to declare that Goodell followed the league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association when he suspended Brady for four games after concluding Brady had to know balls were purposefully deflated.

The union countersued to block the suspension, saying a June arbitration hearing Goodell presided over was a sham and Brady was punished severely for something he was never warned about and for which there was no precedent.

Berman directed lawyers, including Brady and Goodell, to update him in private Wednesday about settlement negotiations a half hour before they appear in court.

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Brady has maintained since the Patriots defeated the Indianapolis Colts 45-7 in the AFC championship game in January that he never directed anyone to deflate footballs below levels set by the league, and he did not know any ball handlers had done so.

Goodell, in a July 28 decision upholding the four-game suspension, found Brady engaged in “conduct detrimental to the integrity of, and public confidence in, the game of professional football.”

He discredited Brady’s claims, citing a 2014 regular-season text message from John Jastremski, a Patriots assistant equipment employee, to Jim McNally, a game-day employee who was working in the officials’ locker room.

Goodell said Jastremski, during an exchange about the pressure of game balls, said Brady “actually brought you up and said that you must have a lot of stress trying to get them done.”

The commissioner said he concluded “trying to get them done” must have referred to tampering with the inflation level of the balls.

He also cited a 2014 text message in which McNally referred to himself as “the deflator,” and he criticized the union for not calling Jastremski or McNally to testify during the suspension appeal.

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The NFL investigation concluded McNally removed Patriots footballs before the championship game to a small restroom, where he remained for 1 minute and 40 seconds, which was enough time to deflate each ball.

Goodell also found that Brady obstructed his investigation by destroying a cellphone containing nearly 10,000 text messages from early November until the day in early March when he was interviewed by a lawyer, Theodore Wells, who led the NFL’s probe.

Goodell said that he found the destruction “very troubling.”

In court documents, the union’s lawyers said the suspension was unfair and violates the labor contract, and complained that it would cause irreparable harm to Brady by forcing him to miss games.

They called the appeals hearing before Goodell “a kangaroo court proceeding that was bereft of fundamentally fair procedures.”

Goodell said at the league owners meeting in Chicago that the league is cooperating with a new order from Berman to engage in settlement talks with Brady, but gave no indication that the league is willing to back down on its four-game ban of the Patriots’ quarterback.

“We got the letter today,” Goodell said of Berman’s order given earlier Tuesday for “further” settlement talks between the sides.

“We will certainly cooperate fully with that and will allow the judge to handle the process from there.”


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