With 9:21 remaining in the second quarter of the 2015 AFC championship game, Indianapolis linebacker D’Qwell Jackson intercepted a pass by Tom Brady.
Upon reaching the sideline, Jackson tossed the ball to a Colts equipment staffer. The ball, per the staffer, felt underinflated. Indianapolis coach Chuck Pagano and later team officials were notified.
At halftime, the NFL conducted a rushed measurement of the Patriots footballs (each team uses their own in a game) and found the pounds per square inch levels (PSI) for some of the balls below league minimums. Twelve new footballs were used in the second half for New England to complete the 45-7 annihilation.
Among the Colts, and some NFL executives, this seemed like proof of a massive cheating scandal involving the Patriots, who many had suspected of such things (remember Spygate?). Just how, after all, does one team win so much? And how, after all, does Brady, the one-time 199th pick in the draft, become the greatest quarterback of all time?
So welcome to "Deflategate."
It was 10 years ago.
The ensuing madness was one of the wilder and weirder stories in NFL lore — part who done it, part high-paid legal drama, part science lesson, part Rorschach test, part character assassination, part legal drama and part absurd comedy.
Was this an existential threat to the integrity of the NFL — and would dog Brady even into post-retirement? Or was it a relatively minor bit of gamesmanship? Or, even still, was it a complete nothing of a scandal based on a misunderstanding of high school science that led to the single-minded focus of finding proof of what didn’t occur?
The league spent two years and about $22 million to prosecute the scandal, aided by issuing inaccurate, but damning, leaks to the media that wrecked Brady's and the Patriots' ability to defend themselves.
What the league never was able to do was actually prove the footballs were even deflated. Some of that was because of haphazard checking and record keeping and some because, as scientists quickly noted, air pressure responds to air temperatures, like a car tire on a cold morning.
“Although sensationalized in the press, [the PSI readings were] no surprise to any scientist,” a group of nearly two dozen engineering and physics professors wrote in a legal brief. “… so-called ‘deflation’ happens naturally.”
Or as Bill Belichick, channeling the cinematic classic “My Cousin Vinny”, famously deadpanned, “I'm just telling you what I know. I would not say I'm Mona Lisa Vito of the football world.”
The NFL found no humor in any of it. Initial media reports, citing unnamed sources that only could have come from the league’s side, claimed that “11 of 12” Patriots footballs were “inflated significantly below the NFL's requirements” even though the league’s own report later showed that wasn’t the case at all (some were off by minuscule, essentially undetectable, amounts).
But there wasn’t much Brady could do at that point. He was cooked in the public eye and eventually suspended for four games.
The Patriots, meanwhile, were fined $1 million and stripped of two draft picks, including a first rounder, even though the league-funded “Wells Report” could only conclude that it was “more probable than not" that something occurred here and that Brady was only “generally aware” of it.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell later denied Brady’s appeal, mostly for committing the process crime of destroying his cell phone — which Brady’s camp said was to protect the leaking of sensitive personal photos (we can only imagine) or information (some emails still got out to the public).
The facts and the science of it all were on Brady’s side. The NFL even conducted its own league-wide science experiment the following season, apparently to double check on the veracity of “Ideal Gas Law,” which had been accepted fact by the rest of the world since … 1834. The “study” was abruptly abandoned in midseason and the findings were conveniently never released.
Regardless, the public was far more interested and entertained in the circumstantial evidence — some of it that might have been actual proof of a scandal.
There were plenty of statements that Brady did, indeed, prefer his football on the softer side. Then there was the Patriots equipment staffer who was nicknamed “The Deflator” and another whose pregame routine included carrying the balls into a bathroom (where no security cameras exist) just before heading out onto the Gillette Stadium field.
Was that a chance to deflate all the footballs, as the league concluded, or, as the Patriots argued, just a nearly 60-year old man who needed to relieve himself before standing out on the field for three hours?
Brady, for his part, said in a memorable, double entendre-rich press conference that he was innocent and didn’t allow anyone to mess with his footballs — “I don’t want [anyone] rubbing them.”
Or as the back page of the New York Daily News blared the next day, “My Balls Are Perfect.”
Eventually everything wound up on the 17th floor of a federal courthouse in the Southern District of New York, with over a dozen high-priced lawyers arguing over the case (“billable hours” remain undefeated). One of Brady’s attorneys, Jeffrey Kessler, compared the NFL's sloppy air pressure measurements to a cop determining someone was speeding by counting “One Mississippi, Two Mississippi …”
The courtroom broke into laughter — a rarity in a place that generally handles terrorists, Ponzi schemers and so on. Among the amused was Judge Richard Berman, who couldn’t suppress a chuckle (a few years later, Berman would be assigned the criminal proceedings of Jeffrey Epstein).
In the gallery that day was a courtroom artist, Jane Rosenberg, who became one of the many fringe characters who found temporary fame when her work was released. The sketch showed Brady with sunken cheeks looking, dare we say, ugly, at least in comparison to his often dashing persona.
“Tell Tom Brady, I’m sorry,” Rosenberg later told Vice. “He’s a very good looking guy.”
Judge Berman ultimately would side with Brady and “vacated” the suspension, only to have it reversed on appeal. Brady would eventually just give up the fight and sit out the first four games of the 2016 season. He returned and led New England to victory in 14 of the next 15 games, including a sweep through the playoffs and another Super Bow title.
At one point, the media frenzy over Deflategate was so intense that there were calls for Belichick to be suspended from the upcoming Super Bowl and Brady to be barred from ever reaching the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“This isn’t ISIS,” Brady said with a laugh.
What was it though?
Did Brady try to gain an advantage? Perhaps. Even great players are always looking for an edge and there are plenty of reasons to maintain suspicion.
The NFL never could prove that though and its initial lack of awareness of basic science left them cornered, only to choose to trash their star player rather than admit a mistake (or an overreaction).
Brady’s best argument that this was, at the very most, completely unimportant was by winning four more Super Bowls (including one with Tampa Bay) after his “cheating” scheme was blown up and the NFL had all eyes on his footballs.
A decade later, as another AFC championship game arrives, almost all is forgotten.
Brady may never live down the cheater label but when it comes to the league that once leaked false information about him, suspended him and fought him in federal court, he is now a part owner of the Las Vegas Raiders and the lead commentator for Fox Sports.
The entire saga has just deflated.
