Deflategate

Tom Brady's 4 game suspension was reinstated today.  On twitter Brady is trending, and "Free Brady" is also trending.  There is obviously plenty people who think that the 4 game suspension is stupid.  I want to largely deal with the facts of the situation.  Did Tom Brady know about the football being deflated, and the answer to that is yes.  I think it's pretty damn obvious Brady knew about that.  Why would those Patriot ball boys deflate the ball without the knowledge of the quarterback?  How could Brady handle those deflated footballs on a regular basis, and not know they were deflated?  While those questions don't provide actual evidence, it is still hard to believe that Brady, at the least, didn't have any knowledge of the footballs being deflated.  Jim McNally called himself the deflator, and the Patriots didn't even deny that.  They just said he was called that because he was trying to lose weight.  If you want to believe that one than you can keep drinking the Tom Brady Kool-Aid.  There were plenty texts sent back and forth between John Jastremski, and McNally in which they chat about Tom Brady, and the footballs.  One text states 'Tom is acting crazy about the balls'.  In another McNally seems to joke about the idea of inflating balls as revenge against Brady for his complaints.  Brady and Jastremski began speaking to each other on the phone more frequently after the January 2015 AFC Championship Game.  There is no real smoking gun.  They didn't find any text from Brady admitting that he asked for the balls to be deflated.  There is nothing of that sort, but why should there be.  You should expect Tom Brady to do a pretty good job of covering his tracks. 

There is also the "coincidence" that Brady destroyed his phone right before meeting Ted Wells.  Now why would Brady do such a thing?  It could have been for privacy but a Deadspin article stats, Wells only wanted someone to search the phone for Brady's text with certain key words in them.  He didn't want to dig into Brady's personal life.  Adding more suspicion to the destruction of cell phone is that Brady gave a forensic examiner two phones that he had used around the time, that he would have used the phone he destroyed.  The Deadspin article mentions one phone probably being active between May 23, 2014, and November 5, 2014.  The other was active from March 6, 2015, until April 8, 2015.  March 6 is the date that Brady met up with Ted Wells.  So he started using his new phone, on the same date he met with Wells, and not long after destroying the other phone.  If Brady could hand over those phones, why wouldn't he hand over the phone that he destroyed, or at least give that to the forensic examiner?

There are still some people who hold on to the belief that Brady didn't know about the deflating of the footballs, but many arguing for Brady don't even bring up that point.  They think that the 4 game suspension was too much.  I think that a four game suspension is fair enough.  It seems to me that the NFL players union is becoming more like social justice warriors, while the league can be seen as representative of the system.  The players union bickers, and complains, about so much shit, and they often seem to get their way.  The NFL seems to lose in court quite a bit, and Roger Goddell for some reason, seems to make the perfect whipping boy.  I don't think Pete Rozell, and Paul Tagliabue had their authority stepped on the way that Goddell has.   Players appeal even the most obvious suspensions, in which their actions are caught on camera.  There are complaints about CTE, and the risk players, but then you hear a bunch of complaints about how they won't let the defenders be physical anymore.  The league just can't do enough to make the players union happy.






References
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/25185129/patriots-attendant-called-himself-deflator-because-he-was-trying-to-lose-weight

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=evidence+against+tom+brady

http://deadspin.com/the-full-story-of-tom-bradys-destroyed-cell-phone-1722190784
http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl-news/4420576-richard-sherman-seattle-seahawks-suspension-overturned-appeal-adderall