I haven’t followed this too closely. I know they had texts between two of the equipment guys from previous games talking about how Brady was always on them about how the balls were inflated too much.
But doesn’t the NFL allow some leeway in how much the balls are inflated. Is there any evidence Brady told them to deflate the balls more than is legal? Did either of them tell him the balls he complained about were at the minimum allowed? Or is it possible that they were inflated too highly and could be deflated and still remain within the rules?
More important, is there any evidence he ever told them to take balls that had been inspected by the refs and secretly deflate them below the minimum?
Yeah, the league says they can be between 12.5-13.5, and if the team presents them under the limit the league can inflate them.
Trouble is, the Pats staffer took the balls on a detour after they had been checked and approved by the officials—into the men’s room, which he locked, and where he apparently took some air out of each of the balls to get them under the limit.
The texts between the Pats equipment guys even have the one who took the balls into the locked bathroom calling himself “The Deflator”. They were joking about it and the needles, how upset Brady would be and was when they weren’t deflated right, and quoting Brady as understanding how stressful it was for the guy to get them all done.
Brady also had an hour phone call, a flurry of texts, and a first-ever invitation to the more senior of the staffers into the QB room while damage control was going on—and then Brady declined to hand over the relevant texts.
He’s pretty clearly guilty. But it’s the sort of thing the various teams are always trying to pull on each other.
There was no evidence presented that Brady told the guys to deflate the balls below legal limits. The texts cited are from a game against the Jets in October where Brady was upset at how overinflated the game balls were, which it appears the balls were pumped up by the ref to nearly 16 PSI. He’d apparently laid into the refs ans equipment staff at the game. According to Brady, after that game he had someone find out what the rules say and began supplying the refs a copy so they’d know they didn’t have to pump up balls which were at 12.5 PSI further.
I mostly skipped to the experimential part of the report, but it seems those texts were all from about a week-long period in October following that game, and re-purposes by the investigators to project a pattern. You’ll have to decide whether that’s legitimate.