In other words, it's not in dispute that Brady went to considerable trouble to have the pressure per square inch set at the low end of the legal parameters and that it was McNally's job to ensure that the referees complied with Brady's preference to deflate the footballs to that level. This undisputed evidence in Goodell's own report would suggest that Brady was acting within the rules. And why would someone go to all that trouble if the plan was to have the balls deflated surreptitiously afterwards?
Goodell also states as an unchallenged fact that the AFC Championship game was the only time when McNally took the footballs on his own to the field, writing: "Other referees ... said ... he [McNally] had not engaged in similar conduct in the games that they had worked at Gillette Stadium." So, what kind of a scheme was this to secretly deflate footballs when it allegedly could only have been done once?
McNally also explained to investigators that the reason for the confusion about when he should carry the balls to the field resulted from the fact that the earlier NFC Championship game had gone into overtime delaying the start of the AFC game.
The NFC game ended abruptly, causing confusion in the crowded referees' suite of rooms about the need to get the balls down to the field, McNally explained. He said he used the bathroom on the way because there was a crowd in the referees' room. He also couldn't leave the field for the entire first half.
Though McNally had submitted to several interviews with NFL investigators -- and consistently denied any wrongdoing -- Goodell makes a big point in his report over the fact that the NFL's Players Association didn't bring McNally and locker room assistant John Jastremski down to New York City for Brady's appeal hearing. Goodell noted that "The Management Council [consisting of rival owners] has argued that an adverse inference should be drawn from the NFLPA's decision not to seek testimony from Mr. Jastremski and Mr. McNally."
To this day, there remains no explicit evidence that the balls were deflated after they left the referees' room. Indeed, the often-cited text messages between McNally and Jastremski referred not to the AFC Championship game but to a problem from a game against the New York Jets in October when the referees illegally over-inflated the footballs, prompting a complaint from Brady that Jastremski conveyed to McNally, whose job it was to make sure the referees deflated the balls to the level that Brady preferred.
All the banter in the texts between the two locker room guys, including McNally's disparaging remarks about Brady, can be understood in the context of McNally reacting defensively to criticism that he had not gotten the referees to deflate the balls in the Jets game to the low end of the permissible levels or even below the high end of the permissible levels at 13.5 psi. Jastremski tested the balls after the game and found them over the legal limit with one at nearly 16 psi.
Goodell's report makes no reference to the NFL's sloppy protocols for ensuring that footballs are inflated properly, nor to the chaotic testing of the footballs during the halftime of the AFC Championship game when there was even disagreement over the sequencing of the measurements, a key issue given how fast balls naturally re-inflate when brought into a warm setting.
Much like the original Wells' report, Goodell's report slanted every conceivable fact in the direction of the prosecutors' case against Brady.
The Destroyed Phone
The center of Goodell's rejection of Brady's appeal was the relatively new information that Brady had an assistant destroy an old cell phone that Brady replaced shortly before his interview with the Wells' investigators. Though Brady's side had already informed the NFL that he would not give them access to his phone and the NFL already had Brady's text messages to Jastremski whose phone had been turned over, Goodell deployed this new fact as proof that Brady was intentionally hiding incriminating information.
Brady responded to Goodell's ruling on Wednesday saying...
"I did nothing wrong, and no one in the Patriots organization did either. ... The fact is that neither I, nor any equipment person, did anything of which we have been accused. He dismissed my hours of testimony and it is disappointing that he found it unreliable."I also disagree with yesterday's narrative surrounding my cellphone. I replaced my broken Samsung phone with a new iPhone 6 AFTER my attorneys made it clear to the NFL that my actual phone device would not be subjected to investigation under ANY circumstances. As a member of a union, I was under no obligation to set a new precedent going forward, nor was I made aware at any time during Mr. [Ted] Wells investigation, that failing to subject my cell phone to investigation would result in ANY discipline.
"Most importantly, I have never written, texted, emailed to anybody at anytime, anything related to football air pressure before this issue was raised at the AFC Championship game in January. To suggest that I destroyed a phone to avoid giving the NFL information it requested is completely wrong.
"To try and reconcile the record and fully cooperate with the investigation after I was disciplined in May, we turned over detailed pages of cell phone records and all of the emails that Mr. Wells requested. We even contacted the phone company to see if there was any possible way we could retrieve any/all of the actual text messages from my old phone.
"In short, we exhausted every possibility to give the NFL everything we could and offered to go thru the identity for every text and phone call during the relevant time. Regardless, the NFL knows that Mr. Wells already had ALL relevant communications with Patriots personnel that either Mr. Wells saw or that I was questioned about in my appeal hearing. There is no 'smoking gun' and this controversy is manufactured to distract from the fact they have zero evidence of wrongdoing. ...
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