The question that needs to be asked: Why did McNally call himself the "deflator"?

I think a simple explanation is:

McNallys job is ball carrier

Brady *****ed at JJ to tell Ball carrier to get on the refs ASS every single week to make sure the balls when overpumped be "deflated" down to 12.5. I'm guessing this made the refs annoyed that McNally was always there busting their balls to "deflate" the balls down to 12.5 when they as refs dont give a F.

Jokingly McNally now is the "ball carrier" and in charge of getting the balls deflated by the refs hence he is now the "deflator"

In fact, the "needle : )" text might actually mean McNally brought a needle with him to give to the refs to use so they couldn't say well we have no tool to deflate the balls sorry pal.

Q: If the Pats were intentionally cheating and deflating balls to Tom's specifications. Why would they have a part-time employee doing it. And why would they speak of it in texts.

A: The Pats are not dumb, they wouldn't be this sloppy

Q: If all these Brainiacs can determine the PSI of football simply by touching it. Wouldn't every Patriot know the balls feel funny. Wouldn't every Ref immediately be able to feel the difference? Wouldn't every opposing player when they pull at the ball feel the difference?

A: Yes they would! It's not a nerf ball! You can't tell the difference.

Q: If the football is easier to throw, easier to catch, easier to not fumble, would not every team play with balls that were always as close to minimum as possible?

A: This is a made up argument to try and prove a reason for the supposed cheating. Obviously, there is no advantage, or the league would have every team trying to do it. Nobody gave a shyt about it until now. Nobody in 70 years has ever thought of ball pressure. You fill the ball up and play, it's tactile for the QB nothing more, nothing less.

Brady2Moss said:

I think a simple explanation is:

McNallys job is ball carrier

Brady *****ed at JJ to tell Ball carrier to get on the refs ASS every single week to make sure the balls when overpumped be "deflated" down to 12.5. I'm guessing this made the refs annoyed that McNally was always there busting their balls to "deflate" the balls down to 12.5 when they as refs dont give a F.

Jokingly McNally now is the "ball carrier" and in charge of getting the balls deflated by the refs hence he is now the "deflator"

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Is there anything in the 103 day 243 page report that says Wells interviewed any of the other NFL Head referees and asked about their experience with the Patriots, their ball preference or their interaction with McNally?

AndyJohnson said:

Is there anything in the 103 day 243 page report that says Wells interviewed any of the other NFL Head referees and asked about their experience with the Patriots, their ball preference or their interaction with McNally?

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I'm not sure, I haven't read the report mostly because I don't have the time to wade through garbage to find the nuggets. I'm guessing he MIGHT have done that and then chose to not include it in the report. Just like he interviewed backup QBs and didn't put any of that in the report.

I'm sure anything that painted another picture of what "the deflator" meant was removed to paint the darkest picture imaginable.

Brady2Moss, that's a reasonable explanation. I dig it.

AndyJohnson said:

Is there anything in the 103 day 243 page report that says Wells interviewed any of the other NFL Head referees and asked about their experience with the Patriots, their ball preference or their interaction with McNally?

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This is now question 1B that needs to be asked!

Ross12 said:

We don't know, but it's irresponsible to assume what he meant. Remember that Wells interviewed the team's backup QBs going back many years. If McNally was supposedly altering their game balls, you'd think at least one of them would've known something about that scheme. Instead, no backup QB is mentioned in the report, as far as I know.

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Did they interview them?? MAybe what they said didn't fit the NFL narrative so it wasn't included???
Wells report
https://nfllabor.files.wordpress.co...s-re-footballs-used-during-afc-championsh.pdf


page 24 lists witnesses and no backup QBs.....

------------------------
http://www.csnne.com/new-england-patriots/deflategate-questions-need-answering-wells

They’ve talked to enough people. At the owner’s meetings, I asked someone who would know what the holdup was. They said, “You figure they’d talk to the backup quarterback, right? Well, they’re talking to the backup quarterbacks from years ago too.” I don’t know if that was apocryphal or not, but I’ve heard the investigators have been through Foxboro more than once. Anybody who touched the footballs or knows the people who touched the footballs has been subjected to metal chair under a single naked lightbulb-type questioning.

zgotts said:

We all know the science in the Wells Report is bunk, which means the text messages are the basis of the "more probable than not" determination.

Looking at the text messages, the only words that seem potentially damning are McNally referring to himself as the "deflator" and joking about "not going to espn". Wells himself pinpointed those texts twice in his conference call yesterday. I think it's fair to say that he based his conclusions on those texts and those text alone.

So the logical next step is to ask McNally the question - what do those texts mean? Why do you call yourself the "deflator"?

The answer to those questions hold the key to this entire f'ing debacle. I honestly wish McNally had taken that 2nd interview with Wells. That'd clear up everything. Hopefully they get to the bottom of that in the upcoming appeal and/or lawsuit.

EDIT: I only want this question answered because I think if McNally produced a reasonable answer to it, it'd absolve himself, Jastremski, and Brady of EVERYTHING claimed.

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1. If you do math and science right everything else is irrelevant: there was no modification of the balls. That they continued investigation after the point of the science tests and seeing that the two gauges had a .4 -.45 discrepancy tells you all you need to know about the "indepence" and "agenda" of the investigation.

2. His job was to make sure balls are ready for game ---> he both INFLATES, & DEFLATES. that he chose to use the wrong one of those ONE TIME, and FOUR MONTHS IN BOTH DIRECTIONS away from any ACTUAL GAME tells you all you need to know about this piece of "evidence".

3. BOLDED PART YOUR quote: doing a 5th interview with team and 2d with the whore would have only given them more quotes to take out of context. It would have resolved NOTHING IN PATS FAVOR.

He is far better off to give a 5th interview under oath before a judge and jury. Follow up his testimony with cross-exam of the whore. McNally will come across as a choir boy in comparison.

Sicilian said:

Based on the general tone of those texts, it fair to say (if they weren't completely joking about the whole exchange), that Brady can be a bit of a hard ass on the help when it comes to getting things the way he wants them. Hell, he'll chew out fellow teammates, who are his peers in general, when they don't get plays exactly right, it's not weird to think he probably gave Jastremski a ration of **** for over-inflated footballs.

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But, remember... the text messages were months apart.

The "deflator" text was in May 2014. There were no games. McNally wasn't working. Brady hadn't been around for months as the offseason program was just starting.

The text string about Brady *****ing was in October after the Jets home game when the balls measured 16 psi. Obviously, nobody had deflated those balls....

hwc said:

But, remember... the text messages were months apart.

The "deflator" text was in May 2014. There were no games. McNally wasn't working. Brady hadn't been around for months as the offseason program was just starting.

The text string about Brady *****ing was in October after the Jets home game when the balls measured 16 psi. Obviously, nobody had deflated those balls....

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My point is you could explain the ESPN comment as, "I bet ESPN would like to hear that this 'nice guy' is really an *******." That kind of thing.

Also depending on the PSI of balls when they come fresh from the box, McNally might be spending his month of May deflating hundreds of balls to 12.5 for Tom. Which obviously sounds like it would blow.

This is the part of the text that I find most interesting.

Jastremski: I checked some of the balls this morn… The refs (expletive) us…a few of then were at almost 16

Jastremski: They didnt recheck then after they put air in them

So if the Pats were doctoring balls AFTER the ref's had checked them why would those balls be inflated to 16psi? If McNally is a professional deflator how on earth did he miss balls that were well over the legal range when he was deflating them? I mean this guy is supposed to be able to accurately remove .5 - 1 psi of air from 12 footballs in 100 seconds.

Did the Deflator nickname appear before or after the 16 PSI Jets game?

sieglo said:

Did the Deflator nickname appear before or after the 16 PSI Jets game?

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Deflator and ESPN comments: May, 2014
Jets PSI game: October, 2014


Wells essentially claims there's an invisible line joining the incidents, despite there not being any actual evidence of that.

Patriot_in_NY said:

Who freaking knows..... Me and wife have goofy senses' of humor. Whenever she ask's me to do something she knows I don't feel like doing, I will reply with "*****.... Please". In person, on the phone, in text messages..... It's our funny "little thing". In fact, when things get a little heated between the two of us a well placed "*****.... Please" will surely break the tension and have us giggling in no time. She gives as much she gets as well.

However............. looking at just those texts messages without any other context, one could easily make the statement that I don't have any respect for my wife (or woman in general for that matter). Nothing could be further from the truth and me and my wife have been happily married for over 25 years. The same thing goes with many of my friends. We bust stones in any other number of ways via text.

My point is............ taken out of context, one could absolutely make false assumptions about my relationships based on looking just at my text messages. unless you have a full understanding of the dynamics of any given relationship, you can't possibly begin to assign meaning (beyond a reasonable doubt) to a small snippit of an exchange from a text.

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Exactly! They could make you look like you hated your wife. If she disappears (God forbid) you could be starring in Gone girl.

Deus Irae said:

Deflator and ESPN comments: May, 2014
Jets PSI game: October, 2014


Wells essentially claims there's an invisible line joining the incidents, despite there not being any actual evidence of that.

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I didn't realize the timing of the comments. It's a very long invisible line.

Because Brady would have him deflate balls after the refs checked them in the past. It all started in May 2014.

The thing is, no one knows in what games the balls were deflated. No one ever checked.

The dumb idiot forgot to deflate them before the Jets game in October.

He also forgot to do it before the Colts game in the AFCCG. If he had, the intercepted ball wouldn't have measured 11.75.

Therefore, even though Brady has him doing this regularly, we don't have anything to tell us in which game he did these things. The texts are totally irrelevant.

lurker1965 said:

If my job was to put the balls at 12.5 and after games they were 16 and such I could either throw the balls out or get nick named "deflator." I'm amazed and disappointed no one has figured out that obvious bit yet.

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It does seem clear to me that McNally's job, if the quotes in the Wells report are not totally taken out of context by Wells, is to take a needle and make sure the Balls are where Brady wants them to be - 13 PSI according to the text messages (again, a legal level)

My guess is that "the deflator" does in fact come from the fact that McNally's responsibility included making sure that the officials didn't "screw them" as they conveyed in the text messages in that the officials actually did not check the balls PSI

Now again, is it cheating to correct the cheating of the officials?

That is, when the officials violate their own rules, aren't we barking up the wrong tree when we're talking about penalizing McNally for deflating the balls back to regulation?

The bottom line is that until other teams and the NFL decided they wanted to play "gotcha" with the Pats, no one in the NFL ever cared about PSI - to the extent that the officials didn't care if they violated their own rules

So all of this indicates to me that McNally may be technically in the wrong, but the officials are "more wrong" - but that regardless there is no indication that Brady told McNally to violate a rule. Brady is stated to have referenced a needle via one of the guys in a text - so it may be that he knew that someone's role was in fact to let air out if they were over-inflated.

But that doesn't indicate he expected that to be done in violation of the rules

Remember, it was legal for QBs to prepare balls as they prefer within regulation. Brady may not have known the Officials were the ones over-inflating the balls and thus he may have been blaming Jastremski and McNally (who it does sound like Brady didn't even know, and McNally wasn't happy about that and the lack of tips that Brady would provide)

For anyone who wants to read it, it starts on Page 4

https://nesncom.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/entirewellsreport.pdf

Deus Irae said:

Deflator and ESPN comments: May, 2014
Jets PSI game: October, 2014


Wells essentially claims there's an invisible line joining the incidents, despite there not being any actual evidence of that.

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If Brady had him illegally deflating balls prior to the Jets game, then why is it after the Jets game Brady goes to Jastremski with the rule book citation and asks him to make sure the balls are at 13?

It just makes no sense.

sieglo said:

If Brady had him illegally deflating balls prior to the Jets game, then why is it after the Jets game Brady goes to Jastremski with the rule book citation and asks him to make sure the balls are at 13?

It just makes no sense.

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Wells clearly slants everything. Check out this footnote (#47, page 75):

Our investigation did not discover these messages until after our initial interview with McNally. In response to our request for a follow-up interview, rather than producing McNally, counsel for the Patriots tried to negotiate terms, requested that interview topics be provided in advance and offered to “consider” the use of written interrogatories, all of which we declined as inappropriate and inconsistent with our reliance on traditional investigative methods. We reiterated our offer to conduct our follow-up interview of McNally at any time or location convenient to McNally, but counsel for the Patriots refused.

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First, written interrogatories ARE a traditional investigative method. Second, agreeing on the range of topics in advance is not something particularly unusual. Third, as I've mentioned before regarding telephonic depositions, telephone interviews happen all the time.


So Wells berates the Patriots for 'refusing' to give him McNally, but only acknowledges that he was demanding an all-or-nothing interview in the footnotes.


In situations of this nature, an independent investigator is supposed to be impartial and unbiased, and interested only in getting the truth, as opposed to proving a narrative. Wells clearly failed on that.