As bad as this looks for Brady, the one thing the Patriots and Pats fans need to hang their hat on is that Belichick hasn't been involved in this at all.
Stephen A. Smith was right about this, so let's assume he's right about other things he said today...he implied that the reason Bob Kraft ultimately accepted the team penalties for this was because he didn't want the league to investigate further and find out if Bill Belichick had anything to do with this. Part of the deal for Belichick's punishment with spygate was that if he were to ever be implicated in another kind of cheating scandal again, he could be banished from the league. And what's worse? Losing the quarterback for 4 games, or the coach for a year, maybe even forever?
Given how much control Belichick has of the franchise, how the common joke is that nobody goes to the bathroom in Gillette stadium without him knowing about it?...and yet he didn't know about the deflation of footballs?...As much as it sucks that this is happening to Brady, there's the chance that it could've been ALOT worse. The stain on the franchise because of spygate is at least arguable...if Belichick gets implicated in deflategate too, well then that unequivocally puts an asterisk and stain on the entire Belichick era Patriot legacy