Who’s up for another round of the NFL’s favourite game: Parse The Press Conference Words? …Anybody? Too bad, because the continent’s football media is playing anyway, so you’re coming along for the ride.
Up on the podium this time: Tom Brady. Super Bowl winning quarterback. GQ cover star. Husband to a supermodel and alleged role model to us all. Also…a cheater? Is Tom Brady a cheater?
“I don’t believe so,” said Tom Brady, smiling his handsome smile and wearing a cool-looking Patriots toque.
This is where we’re at. If this was a political issue, we’d now be headed for eight-to-ten months of uncomfortable questions about the handling of balls, the inflatability of balls, whether or not inflatability is a word, some sort of too-complicated-for-journalists physics things would be involved and of course we’d need to see Tom Brady’s birth certificate. Long-form version only, please.
But thankfully, football is a game, its ultimate purpose is to entertain, and so we should treat Deflate-gate like the professional wrestling-esque drama that it is, have some fun with it, and — as Bill Belichick will no doubt say a few times in the next week — move on to Arizona, and to the Super Bowl.
And we will. Just not quite yet.
In case you missed it, Tom Brady just held his press conference. He was holding a press conference on Thursday afternoon instead of on Friday morning because Bill Belichick spoke on Thursday morning and said some things that could, more or less, be interpreted as “I dunno nuttin’, go ask Tom” while addressing the NFL’s investigation that seems to have discovered the Patriots were using deflated balls during their 45-7 thrashing of the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship.
It seemed like a strange way for a coach and quarterback who have worked in harmony for almost 15 years to address a controversy, so naturally it sparked questions, and comments. Comments about Belichick throwing Brady under the bus. Questions like, “Why did Belichick throw Brady under that bus?” and “Who will Brady throw under the bus when it’s his turn?”
This whole deflated-footballs thing might have been a controversy that meant very little in the grand scheme of things–you know, considering the game was a 45-7 blowout and a few pounds of missing air — wait, air has weight now?! See what I mean about journalists being unprepared for physics? — wouldn’t have made a difference. But yet, Belichick talked in a certain way — that way being claiming that he was “completely and totally unaware” and that the quarterback would know much more about the balls than he would (hint, hint) — and so now it’s a controversy that involves a potential schism between the greatest quarterback-coach combination of this generation.
This is now, if you follow along, a controversy wrapped in a scandal wrapped in an oh-god-they-are-going-to-actually-play-football-sometime-soon exercise in fan futility.
But never fear! Thursday afternoon rolled around and Tom Brady, in all his magazine cover-boy glory, was front and centre, ready to answer all questions, especially the tough ones like, “Will this motivate you guys?” (It will.)
Brady echoed Belichick’s earlier denials, saying he “was surprised as anybody when I heard Monday morning what was happening.”
He said he prepared the game balls the same way he always does before the AFC championship game, with no intention of tampering with them whatsoever, and that was that. He compared the act of breaking in a football to breaking in a baseball glove and reiterated that he was disappointed the controversy was taking away from the Patriots achievement.
He claimed he noticed no difference between the game balls in the two halves of the game, even though the deflated balls were reportedly removed at halftime. Which is, coming from an elite athlete so used to precision in every aspect of his professional life, a little hard to swallow. He said he was focused on the game itself.
There is no proof he was lying about any of this, and nothing to go on in his favour other than his very handsomely stated word.
Brady said, “I have questions, too.” And said that he picked out the footballs and they felt perfect and that was the last he thought of them. Which would seem to throw some team ball boys under the bus, but that’s a bus nobody’s going to care much about.
He also said that everybody has their own opinion, ignoring the fact that many columnists have the exact same opinion on this, just at different temperatures.
He said he was busy preparing for the Super Bowl and that he has “no knowledge of anything,” which is how I’ve felt since I started writing about this a couple of days ago.
Reporters screamed, Brady smiled that cocky smile and we all wondered why any of this mattered because the game was 45-to-freaking-7. He said, “I felt like we won the game fair and square.” And we all nodded and wondered why we still had to bother with this.
Brady also said he couldn’t do anything about things that have happened in the past and that he’d now be busy blocking out everything and preparing for the Super Bowl.
O Lord, would that we digital ink-stained wretches could do the same.