Full title “Brady’s grip, Goodell trips; or, Why were the game balls in the Jets-Patriot game 16 PSI in the first place?”
Among the many gems in the deflategate appeals transcripts was Tom Brady explaining:
I’m just gripping it like a golf club. I’ve tried to explain it. It’s like a golf club. You don’t squeeze the golf club. You handle it very gently. And that’s the same way I hold a football.
Maybe Brady said this previously, in the January 22 press conference for example, but if so I think this is possibly one of the most important things we all missed. It always seemed a self-evident to me that some quarterbacks might want balls less deflated because it makes it easier to control if they can squeeze into it a little bit. However now that he brought this up, and in consideration of his other explanations such as the fact that what he is most concerned with is the suppleness of the leather and its tackiness, it makes sense that he would grip it “gently” — although obviously he has a firm enough grip to be able to control it. “Grip” is not the same as “squeeze” and I dare say we may have all missed this subtle distinction. Anyone who has played sports knows that it is generally true that grip and control is complex, and squeezing a ball or a bat or a golf club hard may not be proper, or at least proper for the particular talents that you have.
It could be that Brady is making this up in the context of his testimony for the purposes of denying that inflation per se is important to him, so we need to look at some other evidence. John Jastremski claims (in other testimony — although note that a major weakness of the Wells report is that he rarely quotes verbatim testimony, but always summarizes or paraphrases what the interviewees said) that up until recently he inflated balls in the 12.9 to 13.0 pound range, and always the focus in ball preparation was all of dozens of other details such as sanding the ball, using certain types of chemicals at times and not at other times, having ball boys toss the balls hundreds of times, and rubbing them with sand. What Brady and Jastremski came to realize, only recently, was not that the ball was more or less squeezable but that over-inflated balls got to be noticeably large in diameter.
When this come to his conscious attention? In the 2014 Jets game at Gillette, a Thursday night game on October 16. Much of the testimony revolves around Brady being upset, and hollering at Jastemski that “the balls sucked.” No one denies these basic facts. What Wells attempts to fabricate out of this is a conspiratorial and secret relationship between Brady and Jim McNally, the part-time stadium helper whose job it is to assist the referees by taking the approved game balls to the field. We will leave the Brady-McNally alleged conspiracy aside, and ask: why were these balls over-inflated in the first place? Jastemski’s text message, cited in the Wells report (and you have to assume Wells thinks this is right, since everything else in his hypothesis revolves around these text messages), was “I checked some of the balls this morn… The refs f****d us…a few of then were at almost 16.”
So wait, how did they get to be 16 PSI?!? It’s hard to believe that this even happened. Who did it and when?
Was it Jastremski? It was a surprise to him, no one denies that part. It was a surprise to Brady, and notably he claims that this was the time he first started to pay attention to the inflation specifications at all — basically he testified that up until this point in his career he did not even know the actual numbers. (Is this plausible? One way to find out is to ask a bunch of NBA players if they know the inflation specifications on a basketball — I’ll bet fewer than 10% do.) However, when he did find out that these “rock hard” balls were out of spec, he found out what the rule was and communicated to Dave Schoenfeld, Jastremski’s boss, that he wanted the officials to be aware of what the rule was from then on out, and while they were at it they may as well start out on the low end of the range, since that was allowable by rule.
Was in McNally? Wells has feeble text message evidence that McNally once referred to himself with the nickname “The Deflator” and this text message was sent in May 2014. Was McNally’s secret job to deflate footballs? If so, then he was assigned to do that at least by May 2014. Was his job to do that on October 16? Oops! If he did he failed miserably! It is hard characterize McNally’s personality from a few text messages, but nothing points toward him being very trustworthy. That’s the guy Brady was secretly in cahoots with?!? None of this is self consistent.
Was it the officials? That seems the most likely, actually. Why, when and how this might have happened should be put to them directly as a question by someone who cares about the integrity of the game. At this point that would seem to fall on the shoulders of the Fourth Estate, since Goodell has now proven to be so unreliable. Assuming we in the public at large get a satisfactory answer as to how this occurred, whatever that answer is will point directly to that fact that the NFL was never really on top of or in control of ball inflation specifications in the first place, and the entire deflategate “scandal” falls apart. There was no “scandal” at all, there was merely a mid-event check that had no precedent. Loose, mis-represented and misunderstood data spun out of control as a “story” in social media. It could have and should have been squelched within hours since for one thing it had no discernible affect on the outcome of the game — but everyone loves a scandal much more than mundane truth, especially one involving the “Cheatriots.”
Wells makes much of a comment by McNally during the time Walt Anderson et al were checking the game balls (which inexplicably took “20-25 minutes” by the way). The Wells report says:
At some point during the process of gauging and marking the footballs, Jim McNally, who came and went from the Officials Locker Room over the course of the afternoon, requested that Anderson make sure that the Patriots footballs were set at 12.5 psi. According to Anderson, McNally said something to the effect of “remember, Walt, Tom likes them at 12.5,” though he could not recall McNally’s precise wording. A number of other game officials heard McNally make this request. Anderson said that he did not think much of the request at the time because he had heard McNally make similar requests in the past. In particular, Anderson believes that McNally may have made the same request when Anderson had most recently officiated at Gillette Stadium for the Patriots game against the Denver Broncos on November 2, 2014.
Wells implies this is evidence of a conspiracy. I think it is equally if not more likely that Brady wants to be clear and thorough, so that the officials don’t screw up like they did on October 16, and while it was not McNally’s ultimate responsibility (it was Schoenfeld’s) he was being a good soldier and reminding them. Brady even photocopied the rule book page, highlighted the relevant section (I can almost feel his annoyance while he did that), and insisted Schoenfeld deliver the paper to the officials. Don’t ever over inflate them again, was his message, and while you’re at it keep them at the lower end of the allowable range.
Roger Goodell has been “tripping” in more ways than one lately. In the slang sense of hallucinating, he appears more and more to be out of touch with reality. As I argued yesterday this may generally be due to regal aloofness, and I made the prediction that this should be easy to determine by looking at previous events. Googling “roger goodell aloof” returned dozens of hits, including this one from Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports, in an article on the Ray Rice case:
Humility, however, has never been Goodell’s strong suit. What we got was traditional Roger, seen as arrogant and aloof, the son of a U.S. senator who can hardly be bothered by criticism of his actions or genius.
It hardly seems I should waste effort typing on this keyboard to look for more examples, I will leave it as homework for the reader. However note that this arrogance explains the other version of “tripping” inasmuch as he is misstepping badly, because arrogance is a close cousin of incompetence. It is hard to read the situation any other way.
If he is eventually fired (and the pressure — ha ha — is building steadily) I wish him well in his next endeavor. Maybe he’ll get a nice part time job as a ministorage manager somewhere.