- Brady would have to figure out at some point in time that he preferred balls just under 12.5 PSI, in the 11.5-12.0 PSI range.
- Brady determined that the difference between 11.5-12.0 PSI and 12.5 PSI was so great that he felt he needed to ask an employee to tamper with the footballs, and not even risk under inflating them and hoping they passed inspection.
- However, Brady could only tamper with the footballs at home. He’d be using footballs that were so different in his mind that they were worth tampering with at home…but on the road, he would be out of luck. Despite this, he’s better on the road than most NFL QBs.
- Note that this makes the Indianapolis Colts claim that the Patriots used deflated footballs in Indianapolis during the regular season essentially impossible.
- During the October, 2014 game against the Jets, “the deflator” Jim McNally failed to deflate at least some footballs (that were 16 PSI)
- Tom Brady, after blowing up on the sideline about the quality of the footballs during that game, performed the following as a charade to protect the cover-up:
- Brady (allegedly) in front of others, declared he wanted balls at the low permissible range (~12.5 PSI) before giving them to the referee. (Even though McNally was already deflating balls…so why would they not already be at the low range to save McNally time in his deflation process?)
- Brady brought a rule book to the officials to show them 12.5 PSI balls should not be touched…even though he knew McNally was going to alter them.
- Furthermore, Brady would have to go through the charade of inspecting the balls pre-game in front of other people, knowing that these would not be the balls he would playing with. His true pre-game ritual was one of the following:
- He secretly inspected footballs at some 11.5-12.0 range and then told the staff to inflate them to 12.5 so he could stage a second, phony inspection in front of others every game (right before the balls are delivered to the officials), while no one noticed him missing or sneaking away during this period, OR
- He simply inspected them at 12.5 for tack and feel, knowing that once he let out a little air, the PSI would be where he wanted it. This explanation assumes that he is both so meticulous about PSI that we wanted less than a pound of PSI (which no human can seemingly detect) out of the ball and simultaneously does not think there would be a tactile difference between a 12.5 and 11.5 PSI ball that he needs to actually inspect the real ball-condition he will play with.
- Jastremski and Brady are either horrible at tampering — setting balls to 12.75-12.85 instead of the lowest permissible 12.5 before the Jets game (which would make McNally’s work harder), or they did indeed start at 12.5 pre-October, 2014 and decided to make up a story to tell the investigators that they used to inflate to 12.75-12.85 so Brady could plausibly deny ever knowing about PSI before October, 2014.
I have yet to see Wells, or anyone, make sense of this convoluted, contradictory set of events that must have had to happen according to their meaning of the “deflator” text and allegations about regularly deflating footballs. Which of the following conclusions seems more likely to you?
Conclusion A: Tom Brady figured out that he really liked footballs just under the legal limit, decided not to have his equipment team slightly under inflate balls to hope they would pass a lackadaisical NFL inspection process (the technique Aaron Rodgers told Phil Simms about), but instead set up an elaborate process to take just a little air out of the balls, but only at home. And Walt Anderson forgot what gauged he used.
Conclusion B: Walt Anderson correctly remembered what gauge he used, footballs can have incredibly small perturbations outside what we’d expect based on just temperature and pressure and Jim McNally was indeed referring to “deflating” his waist.