Tom Brady Did not deserve to get suspended

1. The Wells Report has zero credibility Although it"s been said many times, many ways, it bears repeating that Ted Wells and his law firm have made millions working for the NFL in the concussion lawsuits and stand to log quadrillions of hours of billable hours in the future. He is as "independent" an investigator as Kato Kaelin would have been investigating O.J. And as I"ve pointed out before, Exponent, the consulting lab that Wells hired, has long been notorious for telling clients whatever they want to hear, from tobacco not causing cancer to dumping toxic waste into the Amazon being a pure good. If the mayor of Amity Island hired these people, they would have ruled Chrissie Watkins really did die in a boating accident. 2. Wells conducted a witch hunt and still didn"t come up with any proof This entire investigation hinges on the simple question of whether or not someone working for the Patriots took air out of the footballs after the officials tested them. Without proof of that, all this business of what Thing 1 was texting to Thing 2 and whether the world"s most recognizable quarterback knew a low-level, part-time official"s locker room attendant is irrelevant. And they failed to find it. In fact, the report contradicts its own "conclusions" with statements such as "those measurements show that there was no tampering because most of the footballs fell within the 11.52 to 11.32 psi for halftime, as predicted by the Ideal Gas Law." (Side note: Now that the Ideal Gas Law is codified into this thing as accepted science, is that fraud Bill Nye going to get back to us on how he said the whole thing is nonsense?) And Brady"s crime is that he was "at least generally aware" of this allegation they did not prove. 3. Tom Brady did not lie to investigators Much has been made of Brady"s assertion "he did not know [Jim] McNally"s name or anything about McNally"s game-day responsibilities," which strains credibility for some since, as we are so often reminded, McNally is a 32-year Patriots employee. Except McNally wasn"t working with Tom Brady, John Jastremski was. But in fact, even he hasn"t been in charge of prepping game-day balls for very long. The guy who took care of that for Brady for years retired last year. And according to people I"ve spoken to, even he will admit it took him five years to learn to get it right. This notion that McNally has been Alfred the Butler to Brady"s Bruce Wayne all these years is an outright fiction. He"s the official"s locker room attendant, and Brady would no sooner have to be familiar with his name than you know the name of the guy who hands you a towel in the men"s room at a nice restaurant. 4. Tom Brady did not "not cooperate" with investigators He spent an entire day cooperating. The fact that he refused to turn over his private communications to people conducting an investigation that had more leaks than the Titanic wasn"t being uncooperative, it was sound judgment. Read those messages going back and forth between two friends and how those are portrayed and tell me you"d hand yours over to these McCarthyites. I wouldn"t, and my image isn"t the face of several billion-dollar companies. Which brings us to: 5. Ted Wells has no idea how guys text each other As he did with the Richie Incognito-Jonathan Martin investigation, Wells proves he hasn"t the first damn clue how men talk to other men. Guy-speak to him might as well be the Windtalker"s code. "F- Tom" is portrayed as genuine anger. Stuff about expecting some Uggs and memorabilia is made out to be an extortion racket. Every text he included in the report he interpreted in the worst possible light. They may have been. Only the people doing the texting know for sure, which is why private communication is supposed to be private. Because an outsider will always interpret what you and your friend say the way they want to, not how it was meant. Everything Wells put in this report that was said between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (stick tap to my buddy Nick) is his opinion. Not fact. And still there"s not a smoking gun to be found. 6. The psi "data" is a disgraceful mess I said this last week, officials not only used two gauges that gave different results, they can"t even say which one was which. Or they blame discrepancies on "transcription errors." And while the national pundits are late to the party, I"m glad they showed up. Peter King points out that at halftime the footballs should have been in the 11.32 to 11.52 range, and with one gauge it was. Taking both gauges together they were 11.30, which is all of 0.02 psi low. And Mike Florio weighs in with the observation that according to Walt Anderson"s "best recollection" in the pregame he tested the balls with the gauge that had the Pats well within the range. That would prove no tampering to anyone who didn"t have an agenda. But investigators instead basically badgered Anderson to admit it"s "possible" he used the other gauge. Anderson"s "recollections" are fine, so long as they fit the predetermined narrative. When they don"t, they"re ignored. 7. Precedent is on the side of no suspension As pointed out by Mike Reiss and others, when the Chargers were deemed to have used towels covered with Stickum to coat the footballs, then hid the towels from officials looking into it, they were fined $20,000. They appealed and got off the hook. Last November when the Panthers were caught warming up the footballs with sideline heaters in Minnesota, they were told to knock it off, period. When Mark Schlereth got caught lubing up his jersey with Astroglide or whatever, he was fined five grand. The NFL"s own game-day operations manual says anyone caught monkeying around with footballs after the referee has approved them faces a penalty of, but not limited to, a fine of $25,000. Now, I get what "not limited to" means. But if the league thinks so much of the sanctity of the footballs that they set the punishment at the cost of a 2015 Hyundai Santa Fe, how do we make the leap the Deflategate truthers and anti-Patriots zealots are making that Brady, whom a 100-day investigation could not pin anything on, deserves a suspension. Why not just put him in the stockade or sentence him to amputation while we"re at it? This investigation stunk to high heaven. The final report is a hatchet job slanted with opinion, conjecture and spin. The science wouldn"t pass muster in a freshman Introduction to Physical Science midterm. And the punishment being discussed by the legion of Patriots cyberbullies doesn"t come close to fitting the crime. But still the witch hunt goes on. As for me, I"m standing by hoping that Brady demands Trial by Combat, and I pledge myself right now to be his champion. I shall take no wife, hold no lands and father no children. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the wall. I am the shield that guards the realm of Brady, for this night and all the nights to come.