I just poured through the 118-page, double columned document and it took me almost three hours. What does it reveal? That I have a glaring headache now. But hopefully I can help break it down for those of you who have real lives and aren’t slaves to Deflategate like I’ve become.
Here’s how I’d break it down in simplest terms, because there really aren’t any major new revelations here – Brady was exactly how you’d expect – denied any involvement and most interestingly, said he never had any knowledge of any PSI rules before the Jets game in October when the ball was overinflated by the referees.
Brady details his process of breaking in and choosing balls and how once he chooses his game balls that’s the last he sees of them until the field. Also, that the 2006 rule change was solely about the feel of the ball. Pressure never really mattered to him because he doesn’t squeeze the ball. He compared it to how you hold a golf club. That made sense to me.
The science of the Exponent report is the most debated piece of evidence in this whole hearing, with experts from both sides testifying why it was or wasn’t accurate. The main point of Brady’s defense was the timing of it all, how the Colts balls had time to warm up and thus appeared less deflated.
You’d need degrees in physics and economics to be able to sift through those arguments and figure out who is right. I sure couldn’t, but the timing element is the area everyone has questioned.
Regardless of whose science you believe, what’s clear is that no one knows exactly how temperature, water and the general pounding the balls take in a game affect them. You can do a bunch of experiments on them and there’s still no way to be certain if someone stuck a needle in them.
So, we’ll just have to wait and see how the data plays out now that the NFL will be keeping track. But I’d bet it won’t be clean and easy.
Ted Wells likes to talk and he’s a big part of the reason this thing went so late into the night. He seemed excited to not only detail how he put the Wells Report together but defend every aspect of it. But what Jeffrey Kessler attacked primarily was how “independent” the investigation was. It was also fun when Kessler went down the list of all the pro-Brady details that Wells “disregarded”.
Kessler went hard after how much involvement the NFL had in The Wells Report, with Wells admitting NFL attorney Jeff Pash saw early drafts of it. The fact that Wells’ co-worker Lorin Reisner was then the NFL’s attorney at this hearing was not lost on anyone.
It’s undeniable, The Wells Report had the NFL’s fingerprints all over it and from what we’ve seen in the past week, it doesn’t seem like the NFL was willing to give the Patriots any kind of benefit of the doubt, at the very least.
Of everything this might be the NFL’s biggest problem in court, because there are a lot of facts adding up that easily paint a picture of the NFL not only being out to get New England from the start but that there never was an “independent” investigation.
Kessler clearly laid the groundwork for Brady also to have an out on the technicality of never being given the rulebook that says the footballs had to be in between 12.5 and 13.5 PSI. Brady goes out of his way to mention he was never even aware of PSI until after that Jets game in October of 2014.
Brady seemed intent on driving that point home and it was no accident.
This was also the same game John Jastremski texted his fiancee after, writing “the balls are supposed to be at 13″. Why would he lie to her? That’s the only text that says anything about any actual PSI number.
Look, there’s no denying Brady “destroying” his phone or the “getting them done” and “deflator” texts paint a nefarious picture that is easy to fill the blanks around. Those who think Brady was masterminding a plot to deflate the footballs below the legal level will never be convinced otherwise at this point.
When you boil it down, those are the only three bits of circumstantial evidence that the NFL’s case depends on.
But Brady’s suspension doesn’t depend on that, because neither side dropped any bombs in this hearing that change what we already knew. Brady’s case now depends on a fair process from the NFL and as far as that goes, I think Brady and Kessler laid the groundwork that it was not fair.
I am so ready to be done with this whole thing and just starting enjoying football games again.