UPDATE: Tom Brady has appealed his four-game suspension. Read more on the team's reaction to the suspension below.
The New England Patriots today released a rebuttal to the Wells Report that helped send Tom Brady to a four-game suspension, and it is majestic.
The rebuttal, in the form of a massive WordPress site of text written by the team's lawyer, is loaded with truly magnificent attempts to explain away the investigator's findings that often veer toward hilarity.
In the Wells Report, the most damning evidence comes from text messages sent between two Patriots locker-room employees in which one refers to himself as "The Deflator."
Oh, but the Patriots have a perfectly logical explanation: See, it turns out the employee was simply trying to lose weight, hence trying to “deflate” himself. Because that’s a common nickname men give themselves when hoping to drop some pounds, right?
From the rebuttal:
Mr. Jastremski would sometimes work out and bulk up — he is a slender guy and his goal was to get to 200 pounds. Mr. McNally is a big fellow and had the opposite goal: to lose weight. "Deflate" was a term they used to refer to losing weight. One can specifically see this use of the term in a Nov. 30, 2014 text from Mr. McNally to Mr. Jastremski: "deflate and give somebody that jacket." (p. 87). This banter, and Mr. McNally's goal of losing weight, meant Mr. McNally was the "deflator." There was nothing complicated or sinister about it.
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The rebuttal has so many more gems, including long sentences in all caps, an interpretation of Ideal Gas Law calculations, and an assertion that “this appears to have been the first time in the history of the NFL that footballs were measured during halftime.”
But the true shining moment of veering off the track is this passage explaining why one attendant took footballs with him to the bathroom before going onto the field:
The report does not address whether one minute and 40 is consistent with the time that it takes a gentleman to enter a bathroom, relieve himself, wash his hands, and leave. In fact, it is. Nor does the report consider or acknowledge that, with the start of the game having been delayed, there was no reason for Mr. McNally to rush any efforts to deflate footballs in the bathroom if that was the task at hand.
Believe it or not, there’s more about this topic, including this: “In all events, there was good reason for Mr. McNally to stop in the bathroom, since his sideline duties require he be on the field the entire first half.”
Statements like this give more weight to those ripping the Patriots, like Don Shula and Dolphins linebacker Chris McCain, who tweeted the Pats should have their title taken away.
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