I read the whole report last night. (I don't recommend it, by the way) More than half of the appeal was devoted to Ph.D. arguing about what the analytic model was, or should have been. The only thing I got out of the exchanges was that Exponent wrote up their original report so poorly that no one could understand exactly what they did. Frankly everyone would have been better off just getting Snyder and the Exponent guy to talk to each other rather than to the lawyers. Yeah, I know that's not how it works in the legal setting, but there's a reason why "peer review" is a thing. That's the only real way to get at any of truth in the matter.
My other big takeaways:
1. Yee is even more incompetent than I imagined. Not once did he explain to Wells why they were declining his request for the text messages. Wells seemed almost plaintive about this, basically saying that if he had only know their rationale, maybe they could have talked it through, come to some other agreement or something. Just the possibility that this shitshow could have been avoided if Yee had been candid with Wells makes me sick.
2. Wells just couldn't get over the cell phone thing. Apparently it never occurred to him that Brady might have reasons for this other than impeding the investigation. He admits that the refusal basically soured him on all of Brady's testimony and made him question whether any of Brady's other answers were hiding something. My guess is that Mr. High-Priced Defense Attorney could never imagine a situation where he would have withheld evidence from an investigation -- IANAL, but that would be illegal in a criminal investigation, right? So he was shocked that Yee would do the same here, even though it was a completely different situation.
3. I'm a lot less convinced that the NFL Front Office pushed Wells to reach the conclusions he did. Kessler basically failed in trying to make the case otherwise. I mean, yeah, he got Pash to admit that he edited the report, which explains some of the more egregious language in the report IMHO, but Wells was adamant that the conclusions were his alone, and I believe him.
4. Othewise, the NFL front office doesn't look any better than they did before. The only guy who seemed to know what he was doing was Levy, the one who was running the meeting.
5. Kessler obviously felt that the court action was the real ballgame here. A lot of what he did during the appeal had no obvious purpose except to set the stage for the next round.