They said they did their due diligence, five months worth, and they had constructed a plan to repair his public image as part of this. I think they simply grossly underestimated the enormity of it.
When the issue was in another city and he wasn't playing for the team that had him under contract, the story was quiet, so it didn't seem like much. A sleeping giant. Afterall, if he is essentially out of football, the story isn't nearly as big. However, as soon as you make a record-shattering trade and guarantee a quarter Billion dollars to the individual and he's no longer poised to continue to sit out, the sleeping giant that is the story awakens. I don't think they fully anticipated the magnitude of that, and the continued addition of more suits has further amplified it and continued to erode the number of people that wanted/tried/pretended to believe his innocence.
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