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'Tom sucks': A breakdown of text messages in the deflate-gate report
You know that old line about how it's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up? Yeah, let's expand on that for the 21st century: it's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up involving grown men who text like middle-schoolers.
Sure, the Wells Report on the entire New England Patriots deflated-balls scandal is a fine banquet from end to end, but the juiciest, tenderest morsels come early, when we start to learn just what some Patriots employees think of Big Man On Campus Tom Brady. Ol' Touchdown Tom takes care of his people, yes, but he ticks 'em off, too.
Our characters in this little drama are Jim McNally (a.k.a. The Deflator), the Patriots employee who delivered the team's balls to the referees on any given Sunday. However, McNally wasn't responsible for preparation of the balls themselves; that job fell, in theory, to Patriots equipment manager John Jastremski.
Ultimately the Wells Report concludes that it's likely that McNally was directly responsible for defelating footballs used during a playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts, taking the balls from the officials' locker room before ducking into a bathroom to do the dirty work, but that it's unlikely he acted without Brady's "knowledge and approval."
How does the report conclude this? Well, for starters, text messages between McNally and Jastremski.
Here is one exchange from Oct. 17, 2014. Brady had just griped about the feel of the balls during a Thursday night game against the New York Jets:
"OMG." "Spaz." Yes, really. More damning, however, is the fact that Brady publicly claimed not to even know who McNally was, this despite the fact that Jastremski said he did know McNally and that McNally claims Brady himself told him how he liked his football inflated. Plus, McNally has worked for the Patriots for 32 years on a part-time basis. Oh, but it gets better as noted in this sequence shortly before the Patriots' game against the Chicago Bears a few days later:
Sick burn there on Brady's passing rating there, brah. Anyway, it's clear that the hired help is not happy. So what must Touchdown Tom do? Why, bestow gifts on his loyal subjects, of course:
Let the record show that this text, dated Oct. 24, 2014, marks the first known Brady/balls joke in relation to deflate-gate. That's worth a prize all its own. Not as good as "cash and newkicks" (shoes), of course.
Per the report: "On January 10, 2015, immediately prior to the game between the Patriots and the Ravens, in the Patriots equipment room with both Brady and Jastremski present, McNally received two footballs autographed by Brady and also had Brady autograph a game-worn Patriots jersey that McNally previously had obtained."
Well, well, well.
According to the report, this is all part of a large-scale plan orchestrated by McNally and Jastremski, as established in this May 2014 sequence:
Oh, Jimmy. You don't EVER threaten to go to the authorities. Not even in jest. Haven't you seen a single mob movie? That's how very, very bad things happen.
Anyway, Jastremski and McNally tried to pass off the messages as unrelated to the deflation of footballs, that the "him"s were other friends looking to score tickets or some such nonsense. The report found such claims "implausible" and "not consistent with common sense," a.k.a. total BS.
Saddest line in the whole report?
"Brady gives certain Patriots employees Uggs every Christmas, but McNally has never received them." Man. That's cold-blooded right there, especially when you consider that Brady may have even given Jastremski the actual ball he'd thrown to pass the 50,000 career yardage mark.
The lesson, as always: a conspiracy is only as strong as its lowest-ranking member. Also, text messages are the devil's playthings.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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