Do people still think Brady was innocent in this whole thing or that nothing ever happened?
The only thing that should be contested is the penalty being too harsh but Brady does deserve some kind of penalty.
I think he's innocent. Do you think he conspired with a part time, minimum wage employee on a risky scheme to remove 3 to 4 tenths of a psi which is only possible if the ref forgot which gauge he used to measure over 50 footballs only a couple hours after measuring them? Or do you believe a league which has been caught lying about the incident?
I don't believe that the ball boy refered to the other as the deflator because he was on a diet. I also don't believe the ball boy would take the footballs into the restroom without a high porobability of tampering with them. I also don't think the ball boys would be taking all these risks without some kind of direction from Brady. How would they even know that Brady preferred them at 11.5 unless told? And why would they deflate to 11.5 if they knew Brady had the footballs perfect unless they were told otherwise. I know I would never mess with the football that Brady had ready for the game. I wouldnt want to mess up the ball for him unless he said he really wanted them at 11.5.
11.5? There you go, you are wrong about that. You have completely ignored the Ideal Gas Law. It is impossible that they deflated them to 11.5. At worst they were deflated to around 12.1 to 12.2 psi. Of course that only happed if the ref was wrong about which gauge he used to measure over 50 footballs just a few hours before it turned into a huge issue. Otherwise, no air was removed.
Did you also miss the text where Jastremski said the balls should have been 13 psi after the mid October Jets game?
even if they lowered the ball pressure to 12 it is still altering the ball.
Perhaps they didn't take the risk against terrible teams such as the Jets. That would explain why the balls were initially set to 13 with the idea to leave them. I guess you didnt think of that since it doesnt help your argument.
After that Jets game, Jastremski sent a text message that he discussed psi levels with Brady and from now on he would like the balls to be 12.5 and to provide a copy of the rules to the refs. If they were already running a scheme to deflate the balls because Brady wanted them below the legal limit, why that text message? It makes no sense.
It's been a while since I read it, but that the gist of what I recall. It was more about Brady complaining about over-inflated balls [illegal as per the rules], and his desire/preference to have them at the lowest legal limit.
And considering all the science that has come since then explaining how simply the passage of time alters the PSI levels, it's very hard for me to come to the conclusion, with the evidence as presented, that Brady in particular did anything wrong here.
Anything beyond that is pure speculation and outside of the scope of what matters I think.
I'm not an expert on this topic, I don't care much about it, but this latest drama has been interesting.