Winslow Towson/USA Today 
 
 Tom Brady lied. 
 
 That's the "more probable than not" conclusion reached by super sleuth Ted Wells, whose comprehensive, legitimate and weighty report was released Wednesday. 
 
 This is the key segment. This is the part that will lead to a re-examination of a great player's legacy: 
 
 For the reasons described in this Report, and after a comprehensive investigation, we have concluded that, in connection with the AFC Championship Game, it is more probable than not that New England Patriots personnel participated in violations of the Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate effort to circumvent the rules. In particular, we have concluded that it is more probable than not that Jim McNally (the Officials Locker Room attendant for the Patriots) and John Jastremski (an equipment assistant for the Patriots) participated in a deliberate effort to release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referee. Based on the evidence, it also is our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady (the quarterback for the Patriots) was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of McNally and Jastremski involving the release of air from Patriots game balls. 
 
 If you read the rest of the report (Warning: Content contains NSFW language)—including where Wells writes of Brady, "We found [his] claims not plausible and contradicted by other evidence"—you'll know that by "more probable than not," he means, "Oh yeah, Brady definitely lied." 
 
 Flash back to when the accusations first surfaced and Brady swore he did nothing wrong. 
 
 "I didn't alter the ball in any way," Brady said at a press conference. "I have no knowledge of wrongdoing." 
 
 Brady looked uncomfortable. It was the most uncomfortable I've ever seen him in front of a camera. Now we know why. Because he was lying. 
 
 Elise Amendola/Associated Press 
 
 A source close to the investigation said a suspension for Brady is "definitely on the table. Not set but could be part of the mix. All options are on the table." 
 
 The source also said a punishment of the team remains a possibility. The reason, the source said, was that Goodell has precedent. In the Saints' Bountygate case, Goodell said that ignorance was no excuse, that the coach should have known. Something similar was said with Atlanta pumping in fake crowd noise. Rich McKay, the president of the team and head of the competition committee, was suspended from his committee duties despite him knowing nothing of the fake noise. 
 
 The reason this is serious is in-game cheating. The fact that the Patriots would have beaten the Colts regardless doesn't lessen that fact. That's not the point. The point is, if it wasn't a competitive edge, if Brady didn't know it would be, then why would they do it? 
 
 The NFL can't have players and teams simply re-engineering the rules as they see fit. This is not a silly issue, as the owner, Robert Kraft, has always tried to portray it. This is not a joke. This is bad. Really bad. 
 
 Patriots fans will say there is no evidence, and there is indeed no camera footage showing Brady with a bicycle pump and a football. This is a circumstantial case, to be sure, but it is the Halle Berry of circumstantial cases. 
 
 McNally gave himself the nickname "The Deflator," according to the report. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. 
 
 The report is part stunning investigation, part science, and part Deep Throat. Wells penetrated, as he did in Miami during Bullygate, the closed and guarded environment of the NFL locker room. This report is legitimate, stunning and bad for Brady. This will impact his legacy greatly. 
 
 There are three highly problematic issues for Brady. 
 
 First, the report also points out Brady deceived Belichick: 
 
 Belichick asked Brady directly whether he had any knowledge about any of the issues raised by the press since the AFC Championship Game. According to Belichick, Brady said "absolutely not." Belichick stated that he then asked if Brady or anyone Brady knew had tampered with or in any way altered the footballs. Brady again denied any knowledge or involvement. Belichick recalled that Brady also explained that once he inspects and approves game balls, those balls are exactly as he likes them and that he would not want anyone to do anything to them after that point. Belichick believed Brady. Belichick and Brady attended the team meeting, and Belichick told the team that there was "not one shred of truth" to the deflation allegations. When given the floor, Brady repeated what he had told Belichick about wanting game balls to be exactly as he approved them. 
 
 So Brady wasn't just dishonest about the story overall, but he also misled his own coach. 
 
 The second problem for Brady is investigators say flat out in the report they didn't believe several of his explanations. 
 
 The third problem is the text messages between Brady and others, and that he refused to turn over his phone to Wells, who nonetheless discovered that there was an "increase in the frequency of text and telephone communications between Jastremski and Brady" after the AFC Championship Game, shortly after suspicions of ball tampering became public on January 19. 
 
 Brady didn't refuse to turn his phone over because there was too much Flock of Seagulls on it. He refused because he didn't want Wells to see what he was trying to cover up. 
 
 As the report states: 
 
 Text messages most plausibly read as describing a conversation between Jastremski and Brady during which Brady mentioned McNally and said that McNally must have "a lot of stress" trying to get the footballs "done." ("Talked to him last night. He actually brought you up and said you must have a lot of stress trying to get them done..."). 
 
 Those messages and the others cited in the report crush any rational person's view that he's innocent. McNally and Jastremski talk in them about deflating footballs. 
 
 Brady will still be seen as one of the greats. That's not in jeopardy. Yet what this report will do is the same thing Spygate did to the Patriots. Critics of this great franchise say that Spygate tarnishes all of the Patriots' titles. I've always believed that is nonsense. 
 
 Steven Senne/Associated Press 
 
 Now the same will be said of Brady. It does not eradicate every great thing he's done, but it does raise legitimate questions. How long has Brady been doing this? If it wasn't such a big deal, why lie about it so extensively? Why cover it up? Just to protect a squeaky-clean, Facebook-joking image? Or was there something deeper? 
 
 Just how long has Brady been cheating? That is the legitimate question that must now be asked. And this is why Brady's legacy is now seriously impacted forever. Because we just don't know. What we do know is that Brady cheated and misled in this case. That's the truth. That's a fact. 
 
 Go ahead, Patriots fans. Blame the media. Blame me. Blame Roger Goodell. Blame it on a rogue ball boy. Blame it on the Colts. Blame whomever you want. But most rational people, most people who don't have a horse in this race, will blame Brady, as we should. 
 
 Because Tom Brady lied. ||||| It’s a bad day for the Patriots. It’s an especially bad day for New England’s iconic quarterback, Tom Brady. 
 
 The Patriots are Super Bowl champs, but the NFL also believes the Patriots are cheaters. The Patriots certainly didn’t need to illegally deflate footballs to beat the Indianapolis Colts, 45-7, in the AFC Championship game, but according to Ted Wells’s report released Wednesday, they went ahead and did it anyway. 
 
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 The report also says it is “more probable than not” that Brady “was at least generally aware” of the tampering. Golden Boy Tom is likely to be sanctioned when the NFL doles out its punishment in the wake of the damning report issued Wednesday afternoon. 
 
 So there. Deflategate takes its place alongside Spygate. The damage to the Patriot brand is universal and eternal. Brady, the Patriots, and their fans have to live with it. 
 
 Patriot toadies no doubt will line up to say that the league did not prove anything that would hold up in a court of law (Brady’s dad has already labeled it “Framegate”). It’s all circumstantial, they’ll say. Plus, it says right in the report that Bob Kraft and Bill Belichick knew nothing about the intentional deflation of the footballs. It was just a couple of rogue equipment guys breaking the rules. 
 
 Good luck with that one, folks. Bend yourself into a pretzel if you must, but Brady and the Patriots are insulting your intelligence if they want you to believe that they were not aware of what was happening to the footballs on game days. 
 
 No organization, no coach are more attentive to detail than the Patriots and Belichick. And we’re supposed to believe that before the kickoff of the AFC Championship game, a veteran team locker room guy can disappear while he’s in possession of game balls that have already been approved by officials? 
 
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 Seriously, when do the Patriots stop lying and come clean on this thing? The damage is done. Insistence on innocence is not likely to be helpful when we get to the penalty phase of this scandal. 
 
 Nobody in Foxborough looks good. Brady looks like a guy who broke the rules and lied about it. Belichick looks ridiculous in the wake of his Jan. 24 Mona Lisa Vito science lesson. And Kraft evidently has been duped. Again. Just as he was duped on Spygate. And on Aaron Hernandez. 
 
 Remember Kraft’s defiance when he arrived in Glendale, Ariz., for the Super Bowl? 
 
 “I believe, unconditionally, that the New England Patriots have done nothing inappropriate in this process or in violation of NFL rules,’’ Kraft stated in his throwdown speech on Super Bowl Monday. He told us Belichick and Brady have never lied to him and then he said he wanted an apology if the investigation “is not able to definitely determine that our organization tampered with the air pressure in the footballs.’’ 
 
 The 243-page report released Wednesday concludes that it is “more probable than not” the Patriots broke the rules and deflated the footballs. The mountain of evidence makes it impossible to draw any other conclusion. The paper trail indicates that Brady did not communicate with equipment guy John Jastremski for six months, then engaged in multiple conversations with Jastremski (more than 20 minutes of talking) in the days after the scandal broke. 
 
 The notion that Belichick did not know this was going on makes one’s head explode. Nothing happens in Foxborough without Belichick’s knowledge. Reporters check in at “security command” and are videotaped asking questions. No detail is too insignificant. 
 
 On Jan. 24, Belichick defiantly explained why the footballs would have become deflated during the course of the AFC Championship. It was all about science and weather. Unfortunately, the report states that only the 11 Patriot footballs were discovered to have a PSI level below league limits. All four Colt footballs magically maintained a PSI within the league limit. So Belichick’s science explanation is flawed. 
 
 But it is Brady who has the most explaining to do. 
 
 It stretches all believability to conclude that he had nothing to do with this. And it damages his hard-earned legacy across America. There are simply too many football people telling us that there is no way Brady can be telling the truth. 
 
 We all know that America is populated by jealous Patriot haters. Brady and the Patriots do themselves no service by impeding the investigation (team counsel would not let Wells have a second interview with Jim McNally, the officials’ locker room attendant) or telling us the sun is out when we are standing in the middle of a downpour. 
 
 The Patriots won the Super Bowl fair and square, with PSI-regulation balls. They did not need deflated footballs to beat the Colts. It certainly cannot be proved the Patriots were doing this every week. But they have armed their legion of enemies with a new weapon. 
 
 A deflated football is easier to throw, easier to catch, and harder to fumble. The rule allowing each team to prepare its own game balls went into effect in 2006. Since 2007, the Patriots have fumbled far less than the NFL average (once every 187 plays, compared with once every 105 for the rest of the league, according to Slate). They have also been the greatest bad-weather team in the history of football. 
 
 Now folks in Pittsburgh and Denver and Indianapolis are going to say the Patriots have been better because they cheated. This makes the deflation of footballs more than rolling through a stop sign. If there were no competitive advantage, why would the Patriots be doing it? 
 
 NFL commissioner Roger Goodell loves Kraft, loves Brady, and he loves the Patriots, but he presumably has to answer to 31 other owners — most of whom have had their butts kicked by the Patriots on a regular basis. 
 
 Sanctions are coming. For Brady and maybe for the Patriots. 
 
 It’s about systematically breaking the rules of competition. It’s about a loss of institutional control. 
 
 And a legacy tarnished again. 
 
 Tom Brady says he did not alter the footballs in Colts game
– The NFL may not have found absolute proof that Tom Brady cheated by using under-inflated footballs, but yesterday's report suggesting that he did is already doing bad things to his reputation. A sampling: Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe: It was a "bad day for the Patriots," and an "especially bad day" for Brady, he writes. "It stretches all believability to conclude that he had nothing to do with this. And it damages his hard-earned legacy across America." Juliet Macur, New York Times: "Is it now up for debate whether he is one of the greatest quarterbacks ever?" asks Macur, and the answer plays off language from the NFL report: "More probable than not." Mike Freeman, Bleacher Report: "Go ahead, Patriots fans. Blame the media. Blame me. Blame Roger Goodell. Blame it on a rogue ball boy. Blame it on the Colts. Blame whomever you want. But most rational people, most people who don't have a horse in this race, will blame Brady, as we should. Because Tom Brady lied." Adam Kilgore, Washington Post: "Brady’s historic place as a quarterback should remain stable, because to say otherwise would make the mistake of conflating morals and athletic achievement. The enhanced grip matters, yes, but it is not responsible for Super Bowl rings and 4,000-yard passing seasons." Still, it's clear now that he's "a liar," and "what remains of Brady's golden reputation just disappeared."