Tom Brady could have deflated problem from start

As much as Robert Kraft wants the rhetoric attached to Deflategate to stop, four months since the term was invented, it has only intensified in the days since the New England Patriots owner decided not to appeal significant layers of the punishment stemming from the deflated footballs.

With Brady appealing his four-game suspension, and the NFL Players Association angling to force Commissioner Roger Goodell from hearing the case, the Deflategate drama rages on.

I still shake my head when I recall Brady’s initial press conference on the matter the one spoofed by Saturday Night Live when he declared that he knew nothing at all about the intricacies of football preparation.

That was coming from a marquee quarterback who joined forces with Peyton Manning and Drew Brees in 2006 to lobby the NFL’s competition committee to allow visiting teams to bring their own footballs to game day, rather than having the home team supply all of the footballs.

There’s been much, well, rhetoric that pokes holes in the 243-page Wells Report from the investigation into Deflategate, but the cell phone records that reveal the extensive contact that Brady had with equipment assistant John Jastremski in the immediate days after the AFC title game also illuminated just how poorly Brady performed at that press conference.

Evidently, as the Wells Report contends, Brady liked his footballs to some sort of specification that Jim “The Deflator” McNally, a locker room attendant, and Jastremski tried to provide.

For all of the defiance expressed by Kraft including his demand for an apology upon arriving at the Super Bowl site to his response to the discipline that included a $1 million fine and the loss of two draft picks, including a first-rounder the real passionate expressions should have come from Brady.

The rhetoric Brady has given us to this point, including the most recent interview with Jim Gray during a pre-arranged conversation at Salem State University, has come off as so condescending.