Okay, here's the thing about being "The Deflator."
You give balls to Tom. Tom screams at you. You let some air out, shooting for 12.85. Tom grumbles. Tom gets 16 PSI balls in one game, Tom screams bloody murder. You're the peon that gets yelled at constantly just for trying to do your job. You gripe (not on Twitter mind you, but in personal texts to your immediate boss) and you let it out with humor. Not the pressure on the ball, the pressure on you.
You change your target to 12.6 after Tom gets the (ref-overinflated) 16.0 ball(s).
Think about what we know vs. what the assumption is:
Tom is assuming he got an overinflated ball because you're bad at your job. Somehow a new target gets put in place, 12.6 instead of 12.85 - clearly an attempt to deal, by your SOP, with the screw-up.
But the screw-up is by the officiating crew. The NFL official either didn't give a sh*t how hard that ball was going to be, or he was trying to teach the Pats a lesson about always bringing them a ball they think is 12.85. But we know from the Wells report that different gauges can easily differ by .45 - and probably more. There is no standard for the gauges. They don't appear to be league-supplied equipment. It is not important enough that gauges are calibrated by NFL Standard Pressure or some such Greenwich Mean Time equivalent. There is no Atomic Gauge maintained by NIST, no bar of some precious metal in a museum in Paris telling you what a "real" PSI is.
Of course "real" PSI can be determined, gauges can be brought into line league-wide, they can be periodically checked, etc. -- but that would take actually giving a **** prior to the sting operation.
So: Very successful team, shoots for the lower end of 12.5-13.5. Ref, either incompetent or intentionally, goes way out of range -- for whatever reason. The pressure on the underling becomes greater -- apparently his boss did not go so far as to tell Tom "back off, I measured the ball it was 16.0," because the Pats equipment staff changed their target to 12.6... as if McNally's target of 12.85 was the cause of the 16.0 ball(s).
Then you've got the set-up for the remainder of this script. And what does McNally increasingly think his job is? Yes, he's the guy who deflates the damn ball after Tom yells at him. He's the Deflator.
Could he be going to ESPN about what a **** Tom is? Of course. The fact is that this is the most damning thing Wells et al. could dredge up. They presented their case, they didn't investigate what happened. They did nothing to investigate their officials, who, it appears, are free to dispense a sort of street justice when they want, or, to be generous, are free to pump up balls without measuring.
Of course, that's all going by a parcel of texts. But that's what the NFL is hanging their collective hat on: A parcel of texts, a generous serving of spin, and not one iota of physical evidence -- unless of course you reverse the testimony of (once again) your own officials, who "couldn't possibly remember correctly which gauge he used because it doesn't fit the verdict."
What do you do if you're trying to railroad the staffers, the team, and the GOAT? This report.
What do you do if you think you have a real problem with the PSI of balls?
You make the officials accountable. You standardize gauges, you have gauges thrown out or recalibrated if they're out of synch. Etc.
They never thought they had a problem with the PSI of the footballs. They thought they had a gotcha on the New England Patriots.
So the real systemic problem they're trying to solve is that the Pats are better than the Colts. They keep trying to solve this problem, but their efforts continually fall short.
