New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has his appeal hearing Tuesday at the NFL's Park Avenue offices in New York. The appeal could continue through Thursday, and it could take weeks for a ruling to be made.

A lingering question: If Brady doesn't get the appeal result he desires, what are his options?

For some answers, we've tapped the expertise of ESPN legal analysts Lester Munson and Roger Cossack:

Munson's take:

"If Tom Brady decides to challenge an adverse decision from commissioner Roger Goodell, his best option is a lawsuit in federal district court in Minneapolis. That's where Adrian Peterson succeeded in his challenge to an adverse arbitration decision by NFL acolyte Harold Henderson. But Brady should recognize at the outset that his chances of ultimate success are slim.

"Judges are reluctant to second-guess arbitrators. Even when an arbitrator is egregiously incorrect, judges in American courts are unwilling to reconsider and to reverse the decision of an arbitrator. The rationale for this judicial reluctance is that the NFL and the players agreed to binding arbitration, and both sides should be bound by the arbitration. In 99 of 100 cases, judges will refuse to reconsider rulings made by arbitrators.

"Peterson succeeded in his court challenge because of an unforced error by the NFL that was compounded by Henderson. In its action on Peterson's whipping of his 4-year-old son, the league applied a new form of punishment to conduct that occurred before the new punishment was adopted. The use of new and more severe punishment in an incident that occurred before the new punishment was adopted was a violation of rules of fundamental fairness and a violation of protocols known as the 'law of the shop' that governed previous cases involving NFL players. The ruling by U.S. District Judge David Doty makes some sense, but it is a clear exception to the rule that judges do not reconsider arbitrators' rulings. The NFL is pursuing an appeal and is likely to succeed in reversing Doty and reinstating Henderson's ruling.

"It is important to note that Peterson did not prevail in his lawsuit because of the arbitrator's long affiliation with the NFL as an executive and consultant. He prevailed because of an obvious error by the arbitrator. Unless Goodell makes an equally egregious error (which could happen), Brady's lawsuit challenging Goodell's decision is doomed to failure."

Cossack's take:

"The real issue here is why Roger Goodell is in position to vet out punishment and be the person who reviews his own decisions. It makes no sense. This has to do with the impotency of the players' union.

"So how did we end up like this? We end up like this because we have a very unusual labor market. The average working years of the labor market is 3½ years. You have some in the labor market who make a great deal of money, like Brady. But the vast majority of players are interchangeable faces, and thus, as a former receiver once told me: 'All we really care about is, "show me the money," because we know there is a line of guys around the corner waiting to get in and do the job.' So when they negotiate, the league holds firm on having the authority to make these disciplinary decisions in exchange for more money for players. When the players break it down, they see that maybe 5 percent of them would have this type of problem while the other 95 percent say: 'Give us more money and you can make all the decisions because it's never going to affect me.'

"So that's how we get to this point where Roger Goodell can be the judge and jury. It makes no sense, but that's what the players agreed to, with the goal of getting as much money as they possibly can.

"Now you have Brady, the face of the Patriots and in many ways the face of pro football; he has to go through the appeal and my feeling is that once Goodell makes the decision, and whatever it is, that's what it is. You could take the next step legally and say, 'We want to go to court and argue that it violates everything we think as fairness in America to have the judge and jury be the one that decides the appellate decision, too.' But they agreed to it. It isn't something Goodell made up; he has this power.

"Brady could go to court and say, 'I didn't get a fair hearing and the basic tenets of due process were violated' because you can't have the same person reviewing his own decision. I don't think it's going to work because the collective bargaining agreement gave Goodell this power. We've seen other cases where it's happened, but it's rare. So my thoughts are that the appeal is the end of the day: Whatever Goodell decides, that's what is going to happen."