I asked Brady if he worried that too much of his life was wrapped up in football. This was an odd question to ask of a football player. But Brady’s investment in the game has been so total for so long, I wondered whether his age-defying quest was driven by some fear of how futile it might be to find satisfaction in anything else. Brady ducked my question, except to confirm its premise: that football is pretty much everything to him. No real hobbies. “I’m not a musician, not an artist,” he said. “What am I going to do, go scuba diving?”
Football is not merely what he plays and what he does; “football is who he is,” Guerrero had told me. Who would Brady be when there was no football? Former players lament how nothing after measures up to its exhilaration and camaraderie. “The longer you play, the more you get used to the lifestyle, and you can lose touch with reality,” said Mark Murphy, a former defensive back for the Redskins who is now the CEO of the Packers. “You have to have a purpose in life.”
Brady’s parents worry about Tommy after football—what could ever fill the void? Brady’s answer to the void is to put it off for as long as possible. Why not treat his body and time as more competitions to win, and clocks to race and rings to chase? I tried to draw Brady further out on this, but his attention was audibled to something out the window. Four men were walking down his driveway and approaching his front door, part of a team working to finish work on his house. “Okay, I need to deal with these guys,” Brady said, and we were out of time.
7.
BALLGHAZI
January 18, 2015
On a makeshift stage—they’re all makeshift—Brady and the Patriots received their sixth conference championship trophy on the soaked field turf of Gillette Stadium. They crushed the Colts, 45–7, and were headed to the Super Bowl in Glendale, Arizona. Brady declared it to be a season of ups and downs. “Right now, we’re up, baby,” he said.
“We’re up” lasted until the next morning. Then news broke that the NFL was investigating something about the Patriots’ playing with underinflated footballs. No one ever knew this was a thing (the underinflation of footballs?) except for a few coach and front-office types from the Colts, and league officials who were suddenly treating this like Watergate. Bob Kravitz, a longtime Indianapolis sports reporter, broke the news in what might be the most famous tweet in NFL history. “Breaking,” Kravitz wrote from the Gillette Stadium press box in a tweet stamped “12:55 a.m. Jan 19, 2015.” “A league source tells me the NFL is investigating the possibility the Patriots deflated footballs Sunday Night. More to come.” That last sentence might also go down as the biggest understatement in NFL history.
Brady called the ball-tampering charges “ridiculous” when asked about them the next morning on WEEI radio. The hosts took a lighthearted approach to the curious little story, but their questions were on point. “Are you aware of the story about deflating footballs?” began the conversation. “No, I don’t,” Brady said. This was the first he had heard of this matter, Brady added. “Care to tell me if you were deflating footballs?” one of the hosts followed up. “I have no idea,” Brady replied. “Did you get the sense that you were able to grip the ball better than the Colts last night?” Long laughs. “I think I’ve heard it all at this point,” Brady said. Listening to the interview now, it’s striking how deflective and askew the sleepy-voiced superstar’s answers were. “Oh God, it’s the last of my worries,” Brady concluded. “I don’t ever respond to stuff like this.”
Within thirty-six hours, “stuff like this” would be leading all of the network and cable newscasts. ESPN’s nugget-monger Chris Mortensen sent the freak-out meter to 11 with yet another tweet. “NFL has found that 11 of the Patriots footballs used in Sunday’s AFC title game were under-inflated by 2 lbs each, per league sources.” This was the nugget that would launch a million hot takes. America, meet Deflategate.
The Mortensen report also turned out to be wrong. According to a subsequent ESPN.com cleanup, “additional reporting clarified that 11 of the 12 balls were ‘significantly underinflated,’” as opposed to “under-inflated by 2 lbs each.” Never mind that a subsequent multi-million-dollar investigation by the league found the balls weren’t even “significantly deflated.” Or that the NFL’s vice president of officiating admitted that week that the pounds per square inch (PSI) of the footballs before the game was not recorded by the referees, thus making it impossible to know exactly how much air pressure would have been lost in the balls used by both teams.
Or that if I read (or write) another sentence about football air pressure and PSI variations in cold weather, I’m going to jump out the window.
Mortensen was one of the league’s most authoritative and plugged-in “insiders.” No one had any reason to doubt him, but even if anyone did, this was still a fascinating story whose ultimate untruth made it no less irresistible in the moment. Bottom line: even though no one knew anything about air pressure, this sounded kind of bad. Was New England caught cheating again—this time in the midst of the biggest pregame media circus of the sports calendar?
Brady has long prided himself on the fact that he has succeeded despite not being the most gifted or talented athlete. This is a classic trope of star athletes, who use self-deprecation to disguise self-congratulation for their superior work ethic and mental prowess. “I’m always a thinker—I’ve got to outthink them,” Brady told me, referring to his competitors. He talked a lot about flouting conventional wisdom. Does that extend to flouting rules? At the very least, Brady had some explaining to do. But he wasn’t really talking in public at that point, well, except to me.
We had a phone call scheduled for that Wednesday morning to do some final follow-ups and fact-checks for the magazine story I was working on. Brady called me at the appointed time from his home. He said he was immersed in studying film and in full “ignore the noise” mode. When I started asking questions about deflated footballs, I became noise.
It was time to lose my quasi-fan shtick. “You’re in the news,” I said. Brady chuckled, but was suddenly displaying an uncharacteristic shakiness—the verbal equivalent of happy feet. I asked Brady whether he preferred a harder, fully inflated football or a softer, less inflated one. He took another indirect route to the ball. “I get a chance to pick ’em out every week,” he said of the footballs. His evasive construction jumped out: why respond in the present tense when this was about something three days ago?
“Whatever the balls are at, that’s how I like ’em,” Brady continued. So I asked again, How does he like them, softer or harder? “I’ve been at it for fifteen years, we break them in.” (In a 2011 interview with WEEI, he had, in fact, expressed a preference for “the deflated ball.”) Brady then told me that other people had more information than he did. Not really, I said. He had far more contact with the balls in question than anyone besides the Patriots’ center and possibly the official who spots the ball. “Truthfully, the balls feel the same to me,” he told me. “We pick them out, and that’s what we go play with.” Nothing felt unusual about the footballs in the Indianapolis game, he said. “I’ve got so many things to focus on in the next ten days,” Brady said, ending the discussion. “And this is not one of them.”
Not for long. Twenty-four hours later, Brady was the main attraction at an insane news conference, carried live by CNN(!). He wore a goofy Patriots ski hat adorned with the throwback Minuteman logo. He discussed the size and firmness of footballs for nearly thirty minutes. While a nation reeled, Brady tried to reassure: “This isn’t ISIS,” he said in one of his more notable moments. “You know, no one’s dying.”
Well, except for Brady. He delivered a rather terrified performance—though in fairness, the press conference wasn’t his idea, and he (like the rest of the world) had no idea Mortensen’s numbers were so wrong. “He was a lamb to slaughter,” Brady’s father said of his son’s production. “How the league could make him face a firing squad of reporters and not allow him to know what t
he actual readings of the balls were, it’s absolutely downright evil.” QB Tom would suffer stress-related canker sores during the peak days of the firestorm. Outside the bunker, public opinion was running against my pernicious Pats. There was a sense, at the news conference, of the lions seizing on a rare moment of vulnerability for the GOAT. Brady makes an even more perfect villain than hero. The press conference offered a thrilling spectacle of pretty-boy comeuppance. He seemed to embody what Alfred, Lord Tennyson called the “divine stupidity of a hero.” And of course, there’s an Onion headline for everything: TOM BRADY KEEPS REFERRING TO SELF AS “GOLDEN BOY” WHILE DENYING CHEATING ALLEGATIONS.
A few of the lions took it upon themselves to elicit public submission from the accused. “Is this a moment to just say ‘I’m sorry’ to the fans?” one asked. “I think it’s disappointing that a situation like this happens,” Brady said. Another inquisitor tried. “For the fans that are watching and looking into that camera, what do you say?” The question hung like a wounded duck as the betrayed children of New England awaited their closure. Brady seemed confused.
“What would you like me to say?” he said, finally. This struck me as the appropriate response.
In what might have been my favorite moment of the fiasco, former NFL quarterback Mark Brunell actually choked up when discussing Brady’s press conference performance on an ESPN NFL Live segment afterward. “I just didn’t believe what Tom Brady had to say,” he said, his voice breaking. Brunell started 151 games in seventeen NFL seasons and the only thing I will now remember about this clown is that he nearly cried on national television over barely deflated footballs.
Brady would appear the next morning on the cover of the New York Post, standing with Gisele; “Tommy, why did your balls go soft?” read the bubble over her head. Sometimes you just have to stand back, put matters big and small aside, and tip your helmet to America.
* * *
—
A week and a half later, Brady went off to win the Super Bowl. Terms like “vindicated” were thrown around. A new hero, Malcolm Butler, was born, and it was safe for me to be a fan again. My story ran in the Times Magazine on Super Bowl Sunday, with Brady on the cover, as if we had planned this all along. The detail that Brady had a menorah in his kitchen received a great deal of pickup in Israel the day after the game. WHY DOES TOM BRADY KEEP A MENORAH IN HIS HOUSE? was the big headline in the Jerusalem Post. (Subheadline: PATRIOTS BEAT SEAHAWKS.)
Sometimes the people you root for please you, sometimes not. Athletes are like your children that way: win or lose, you’re pretty much stuck with them. You tailor your views and biases, for better or worse. After going off on an extended ridicule of Brady on The Daily Show in the middle of Deflategate, Jon Stewart spoke to this blind loyalty with the following disclaimer: “If you think I would not chastise you if you had committed these acts while in my team, the New York Giants’, uniform, that would be correct.” We like our confirmation biases served undiluted.
After a while, a certain “much ado about nothing” consensus set in about Deflategate. As many pointed out, not only did Brady perform better in the second half of the AFC title game after the alleged ball deflations were discovered, but he also was the MVP of the Super Bowl two weeks later—a game whose footballs were presumably more closely scrutinized for air pressure irregularity than in any in NFL history.
Belichick went on David Letterman the week after the Super Bowl. Deflategate came up, of course. Both characters were in their perfect elements—Letterman the bemused wiseass, Belichick the deadpan killjoy. “I know you know exactly what happened,” Letterman said. “It was some kind of horseplay, am I right?”
“No,” Belichick replied. The host, an Indy native and Colts fan, then mentioned a Patriots equipment assistant—John Jastremski—who was seen on a security camera before the game carrying the footballs into a Gillette Stadium bathroom. Press reports referred hilariously to the employee as a “person of interest” in the NFL’s investigation. The alleged evildoer was seen on camera leaving the bathroom about a minute and a half later. Jastremski claimed he just had to take a leak, which set off many side debates over how long urination should actually take a healthy man in his thirties (accounting for possible hand washing, or ball-adjustment activities, depending on whose side you’re on here).
“I can’t remember the last time I took a leak in ninety seconds,” Letterman said. “Are you at the age where you have this problem?” Belichick smiled and grunted and suggested that Letterman come in to testify before NFL investigators. “I’m ready, swear me in,” Letterman said, “I’m ready to go!”
Belichick seemed to be enjoying his off-season as much as he does anything, except possibly killing puppies. He became an oddly peripheral character in the Deflategate saga. Not only did he successfully shift suspicion to his quarterback (“Tom’s personal preferences on his footballs are something that he can talk about”), he also delivered the greatest podium performance of his career holding forth on the subject. He was the first to posit, for instance, the explanation that the footballs lost air pressure due to weather conditions and constant rubbing, not horseplay. “Bill Belichick, the Science Guy,” he was dubbed on a Good Morning America report, which then cut to an arch rebuttal from Bill Nye himself, PBS’s original “science guy.” “What he said didn’t make any sense,” Nye said.
The coach was quick to acknowledge, “I am not a scientist . . . I am not an expert in football measurements, I’m just telling you what I know.” He could have left it there, but was good enough to throw in this keepsake for the ages. “I would not say I’m Mona Lisa Vito of the football world,” Belichick said, “as she was in the car-expertise area.” This was an adroit reference to the character played by Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, which (who knew?) turned out to be Belichick’s all-time-favorite movie. “He was definitely, you know, dead-on balls accurate” was Tomei’s postgame assessment of Belichick’s presser. Yes, Marisa Tomei was being interviewed before the Super Bowl discussing Bill Belichick and a twenty-three-year-old movie—on the NFL Network. Bill Nye could not be reached for comment. And again, American greatness was fully achieved, thanks to football.
* * *
—
I went to the White House in April to watch the president’s customary Rose Garden reception for the Super Bowl champs. Brady was a last-minute no-show, citing a “prior family commitment,” though I’d heard from a friend of Brady’s that he was protesting a months-old wisecrack from White House press secretary Josh Earnest who had disparaged Brady’s GOAT-to-slaughter press conference a few days after the Deflategate game. Brady was sighted at Gillette Stadium on the day of the White House visit, according to ESPN.
In the Rose Garden, President Obama hailed the Patriots’ fifteen-year dominance behind Brady and Belichick. “They have set a standard of excellence that we may not see again for a very long time,” Obama said. But then Obama couldn’t help but get in on the fun himself. “I usually tell a bunch of jokes at these events,” the president added. “But with the Patriots in town, I worried that eleven of the twelve would fall flat.” A mix of polite laughter, groans, boos—and a thumbs-down from Belichick. This, at the highest level, epitomized how the Patriots’ success had become intertwined with derision.
The Rose Garden was packed with the transplants from New England who are never shy about making themselves, uh, heard. They also always seem to travel in swarms. This included seemingly every elected football “fan” from New England (Vermont baller Bernie Sanders), a bunch of high-level appointees (Secretary of State John Kerry, reporting for duty), and an inordinate number of Pats fans on the White House staff, as Obama mentioned. “Maybe I need to do a better job screening,” he said in his remarks. After the event, I was nearly trampled by a group of Massholes trying to get selfies with Super Bowl hero “Malcolm Butlah.” I recovered in time to witness Belichick introducing himself to Elizabeth Warren, or maybe it was the o
ther way around. I wondered if they would keep in touch.
Belichick stuck around D.C. for a couple of days to attend the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I spotted him at a big fancy after-party at the French ambassador’s residence. It was after one a.m., I was standing in a side parlor when who should walk in but the sullen sideline sage himself. He wore a tux (no hood) and brought along his much-younger girlfriend. John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox and Boston Globe, was with him, along with his much-younger wife. Belichick looked somewhat out of place and wore the shell-shocked expression of someone who had been blindfolded and kidnapped straight out of his film room. But he also wore an endearingly awkward grin, which I took as a signal that it was okay to approach. I made a beeline for the Death Star.
I congratulated Belichick, told the coach I was from New England and a Pats fan and he smiled, no doubt impressed by my icebreaker. I mentioned that I had written a story on Brady and the Pats for the Times Magazine that was published on Super Bowl Sunday. I spoke with a cocktail-driven self-assurance that Belichick would be instantly familiar with my work.
“Yeah, I was busy that day,” Belichick said dryly, and then made his own beeline, for the bar. I figured this was something for us to build on.
8.
CHEATER
May–September 2015
The thought of returning to politics made my head hurt. I had gotten a peek behind the Shield and I wanted to keep looking. There was an inevitability about this. For years I’d resisted sports as anything but a walled-off object of my mental energy—toys to play with on the side of all the serious. I used to get mad at myself for investing so much emotion in these figurines on the other side of the screen. Why grant them power to disturb my moods?
Big Game Page 11