Brady's DeflatGate Response? Poor Performance So Far

Wells Report Is Finally Released.

The hottest scandal in America, DeflateGate, has finally issued a report, an in true Washington style juris prudence, millions of dollars have been spent just to tell us what we already knew, that Tom Brady is a jerk, and he "most likely" did it.

Before today, I hesitated to explain why this "Gate"  is the only "Gate" deserving of the label, and how the outcome was soon to become as disappointing as Ferguson was to so many.  That was before today, or shall I say before Dan Patrick put the heat on Tom Brady in a way he won't easily recover from.

Actually, Patrick's heat was on the designated mouthpiece for the Brady camp, agent Don Yee.  Yee did a great job throughout most of yesterday's release of the Ted Wells report, bouncing from station to station making it clear that the evidence in the report does not give direct accusation- only indirect assumption based upon a preponderance of the evidence.

Translated, the league will fine you $25,000 and additional penalties if you are CLEARLY guilty of this particular offense.  If you are only LIKELY to be guilty as the report concludes, Yee believes the league will be forced to penalize lightly, simply from the details of their own indecisive report.

The king of the sports interview, Dan Patrick, allowed former ESPN anchor Bill Simmons to talk himself towards employment death (Simmons was released a day after a Brady related rant, a rant that Patrick skillfully enticed on his show), while attempting to defend Brady and the Pats from the stupidity of the subject and of many people (that Simmons specifically named) including the NFL officials handling this mess. Today, Patrick used the same smooth skill to force Brady's agent into sounding more guilty than the guy he was supposed to be representing.

Prefacing the introduction of Brady's agent, Patrick disarmed Yee by declaring that he too, the great Dan Patrick, thought the whole deal was silly. And then he let Yee sink his client into a corner that he most likely won't fully recover from.  Patrick does his homework and clearly has an arsenal of questions that he will use as necessary in order to dominate the interview battle.  If you are disarmed by anything he says, he is positioned to keep you there for as long as your conversational capacity leaves you weaponless.

Patrick started the cornering with a simple question.

Is this a witch hunt?

Before today (or Pre-Patrick if you will),Yee's statements seemed to suggest that Tom Brady, the face of the entire NFL, is a guy the the NFL wants to besmirch. Again, Patrick does his homework, so by the time of the Yee interview, Yee seemed much less eager to step his foot into the hole he sort of created with the suggestion that outside forces, witches if you will, are conspiring to bring down Brady.  According to the report, a team did blow the whistle on Brady and Belichick who were accused of having deflated balls against the New York Jets, cluing the league to check for similar behavior in the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.  Instead of standing by a full denial of his clients participation, Yee focused on the fact that the Patriots and Brady never got the clue that the league was watching them like they gave Sean Payton and the New Orleans Saints before suspending people for the Bounty-Gate issue.  Is it a coincidence that the Patriots have the least amount of turnovers in the NFL, and does that point to a concern reaching wider than just the guy who takes snaps at center? Did the Patriot history of rule bending cause the league to remain undercover in their investigation or has the NFL always tried to sweep the Patriots mess under the carpet?

Should the league have warned Brady to "cut it out" like they did three times for the Saints before causing them worldwide embarrassment? During a scheduled event in which Jim Gray was assigned to lob the softball questions at the Superbowl MVP, Brady was reticent to talk much himself because he had not completed "the process he was going through", as he stated to Gray. When Patrick asked Yee for a clarification of the "process" that Brady's undergoing before he comes out with a statement, Yee eluded to the NFL review process and not some mental balancing process that Brady sort of seemed to suggest.

Patrick is constantly pursuing his moment and saw a chance to snatch Yee's tiny .22 caliber pistol out of his shaky hand by asking him directly,

"Did Tom take part in this"?

Yee was quick and did not equivocate in his answer.

NO!

If the process of report review and punishment decision is still in motion, No is a good answer, but its not the best answer of those available.  Yes is a pretty good answer in that the face of the league who admits to impropriety would probably be able to quickly resurrect his place on NFL's mount Rushmore, despite the squishy balls that keep forcing his image flat before our eyes.  Without access to Brady's telephone records, the Wells report could not stick him with anything stronger than a strong likelihood of involvement, so Brady could have chosen to take indirect blame by making a claim that equipment managers were independently acting upon a known preference. In other words, he did not need to reassert his preference before the AFC Championship game and was indirectly not involved. In this way, he could try to massage his agent's original answer into this area of caveat- but "Yes I did it" is quickly leaving the table, along with the forgiveness that comes with quickly laying down on the knife. The longer you wait, the bigger the knife gets.

Patrick wouldn't let Yee off the hook so easily with his answer of "No".  Abject refusal of guilt is the kind of stuff that defamation law suits come from, so Patrick turned the corner that Yee least expected- into the alley where he finally took his weapon right out of his hand.

"Since this could stay with Tom his whole life, will you sue for defamation?", asked Patrick. Yee hadn't planned for the turn because he didn't really think anyone believed in his witch hunt theory as anything more than an agent's ploy to minimize damage.  When the question smacked him, Yee needed a moment to gather himself, so he reached for a Twix  candy bar by using the age old "can you repeat the question" question just to buy some time.  Patrick repeated and clarified the question, but suddenly, Yee was no longer willing to work in hypothetical situations.  Without a gun in hand, Yee shot back with the first thing that came to mind, forgetting about the 24 hours he'd just spent operating in that  hypothetical theory about some kind of Brady witch hunt.

Patrick must have anticipated tripping up his interviewee with certain questions, so he equipped himself with the weight to keep him down if he fell.  When Yee thought he'd gotten up from the defamation question, Patrick pushed him back to the ground by asking,

"Why didn't he (Brady) surrender his phone?" The league had access to the phone's of the equipment guys since they belonged to the team, but Brady is getting presidential with his best Hillary impersonation involving personal records. When it came to the phone question,Yee reached for a shield of cover by saying "I don't want to get into all of that and gobble up all of this air time", yet 7 mins later he was still on air with Patrick trying to clean up his clients mess and the extra spills he had added himself.

In the twisted fate of Gate lore, Brady's Washington style dishonest behavior is likely what kept him from attending the presidential presentation that is customary for those who win championship titles.  Rumor blames Brady's absence on conservative politics, but it seems rather peculiar that the player who is the face of the league would be allowed to let politics to get in the way of an awesome PR moment for the team, the league and Brady himself. Is that the Superbowl picture that you just don't put in the den or refuse to explain your absence to the kids as they grow up?

Did Obama find out  about the ultra conservative Brady when the rest of the family showed up for dinner without cousin Tom in tow?  Did Obama roast the Patrriots during the presentation with the potential that they would be innocent or was he told that Brady had a pending punishment?  While most people seem to think that the NFL draft had something to do with delaying  the release of the 5 million dollar investigation, I am of the assumption that the league was trying to use the White House visit and $25,000 as their penalty to Brady for getting busted while cheating and then lying about it.

Patrick got Yee to declare that his client won't admit to obvious guilt and might fade into the sunset with the stain of cheating and lying on his resume.  Will it be an asterisk?  As much as cheating and lying can ever be legacy stains when the subject is football .psi. Cheating comes in many forms in fashions in the NFL, and even this rule has the potential to be conformed to fit Brady's fancy.

Will Brady do time from the phone messages of 2 angry employee's.

On the other hand, the cheating legacy of Brady will soon be synonymous with the organization that made him famous while tip toeing around the edges of rules the entirety of his tenure with the team.  This season, the league will fix the mess that New England created with their bending of substitution rules last playoff season, although the Pats were actually inside of the rules, just so close to the line that the NFL had to erase it  and redraw it far away from the temptation of rule bending players and coaches like the Patriots. In reality, Brady's asshole legacy is really the only thing that was solidified by the Wells report, which mostly aired the beefs of a couple of angry equipment guys.

Is Tom Killing His Own Legacy?

Tom's seems unwilling to accept that angry coworkers who get mistreated so readily are unlikely to be advocates when you get caught up in a scandal directly connected to your mistreatment of them. Yet, these stupid coworkers- whose names Tom couldn't remember during the Super Bowl song and dance over deflategate- are far from a significant part of this story.

Will more people find a reason to hate a proud
 cheater than already hated the proud winner?

The real story is how and why would it take 5 million dollars and so many months to uncover a story when the main culprits were angry coworkers willing to talk?  The pattern of botched investigations- of sorts- has started to make a really wealthy and classy league look like a really calculated manipulator, much like Bill Simmons tried to levy at the NFL when it cost him his 5 million dollar job with ESPN.  Maybe they needed to employ their really expensive investigators to get these equipment guys to give up their company issued telephones, or maybe the NFL is just as loose with rules and rule enforcement as is their poster boy quarterback and their banner team that he plays for?

I didn't expect much of anything to come of this report because the rules against football .psi are limited even for admitted malfeasance.  In Brady's situation, 5 million dollars couldn't corner him into clear guilt, although his loose lipped agent will force the entire Brady camp to stand on their statement that
they did not participate in this act.

These words will change into something that we can actually forgive Brady for, or they will be the proud last words of a foolish man who can't recognize when its time to give up the fight.  Sort of like the way he plays football, except this ain't about football and it ain't impressive like he usually is on the field. So far, this is  one of those rare, poor Brady performance.