The other owners resented the close friendship between the commissioner and Kraft, who was called “the assistant commissioner” behind his back. But the money was rolling in, so Goodell’s position was protected. Each team was worth more than ever before and total league revenues had skyrocketed 65 percent. Only those nostalgic for the way things once were would still refer to the game of baseball as “America’s pastime.” Football, and most notably the NFL, had supplanted Major League Baseball as the nation’s dominant sports league. This unmatched level of success emboldened the commissioner over time. Later, when negotiating a contract extension, Goodell asked the owners for a yearly salary of approximately $49.5 million, lifetime health insurance for himself and his wife and their kids, and lifetime use of a private jet.74 He had earned a mind-boggling $212.5 million through 2015. This was unheard-of for a commissioner. It was more money than any of the NFL’s marquee stars, including Brady, Peyton Manning, and Aaron Rodgers, had made. Only two athletes, baseball star Alex Rodriguez and NBA legend Kobe Bryant, earned more money over the same stretch of time.
But a debt needed to be paid. If Goodell was to maintain his lofty position and continue to justify an obscene salary, he had to build alliances with not just Robert Kraft but also the other thirty-one league owners, who had their own franchises to run, and each owner looking for a way to knock the Patriots from their throne as the league’s winningest modern-day dynasty. They bided their time and waited for New England to slip up again. And this time, there would be no cover, or cover-up, by Goodell.
Chapter Thirteen
Power Play
Allegiance to the other NFL owners was incentive enough for Roger Goodell to go after the New England Patriots, but why put the bull’s-eye on Tom Brady’s back? He’d had an unblemished career to this point and appeared to be the poster boy for everything the league was selling. He was clean, rarely said anything wrong or incendiary, and he proselytized team success over individual accolades.
Even Peyton Manning, the NFL’s other cornerstone quarterback, had not escaped controversy. While in college at the University of Tennessee, he was accused by former athletic trainer Jamie Naughright of exposing himself and placing his genitals against her face. Manning claimed that he “mooned” another Tennessee player in the female trainer’s presence but had long denied allegations of sexual harassment. Naughright later settled her case with the university for $300,000. Manning was also accused in an article published by Al Jazeera America of receiving supplies of HGH (human growth hormone) in his wife’s name from an anti-aging clinic in Indianapolis. Manning had never failed a drug test, and a subsequent seven-month investigation by the NFL cleared him of all charges.
DeMaurice Smith sat behind the desk in his office and wrestled with the question about why number 12 was now being targeted. He came back to the word he often used when describing Goodell—power.
“Those low-level draft picks fighting for a spot in the league can see what Tom’s going through and will come to the conclusion that they have no rights,” he would later say.75 It was up to Smith and his team of union litigators to protect them. Early on in the Brady case, the key was to establish the rules of engagement with NFL investigator Ted Wells. NFLPA attorney Heather McPhee had worked closely with Wells on the Incognito bullying case and had gained respect for the opposing lawyer.
“In that case, Ted only asked for what he was entitled to, which included Incognito’s phone records,” McPhee recalled. “It was all very civil under the circumstances.”76
Civility was a trait shared by McPhee, but she was also tough and battle tested. The attorney grew up in Natick, Massachusetts. Her mother, Sharon, was a schoolteacher, and her father, Neil, a retired shortstop for the Minnesota Twins. The couple met while Sharon attended her first Major League Baseball game with a friend who was dating another Twins player. After his career in the pros, Neil McPhee returned to his native Massachusetts and coached baseball at Northeastern University, his alma mater, for twenty-nine years.
As a child, Heather delivered newspapers for extra money and earned a scholarship to a local private school where she rode horses. Later, she followed her older brother Dan to Princeton University. From an early age, Heather had developed goals for herself and then worked furiously to achieve them. She carried that tenacity with her into adulthood, where she developed into a skilled lawyer and expert negotiator. McPhee worked tirelessly and earned both the loyalty and the trust of her boss DeMaurice Smith.
She was also greatly admired by Tom Brady, who shared a similar work ethic and keen attention for detail. The two spent time on the phone together in the weeks after the Super Bowl while Ted Wells was conducting his investigation.
“He always maintained such a positive attitude during that time,” McPhee recalled. “He believed the case was overblown because of the hype surrounding the Super Bowl and thought that it would die down.”
But McPhee knew that Ted Wells was a formidable opponent and would not rest until every detail of the case was scrutinized. The NFL had become a very important client for him. The league had paid Wells’s firm more than $45 million for both the Bullygate and Deflategate investigations. Wells was known to lock himself in hotel rooms for weeks at a time while poring over mountains of evidence in the various cases. As with the Incognito case, Wells asked McPhee for Brady’s phone records. The attorney then reached out to Brady’s agent, Don Yee, in Los Angeles to get the ball rolling on the request. She was stunned by the reply.
“Yee’s office told me flat out that they weren’t going to comply and that they would handle things moving forward,” McPhee said. “He [Yee] didn’t feel like Tom owed anything to Wells and his team.”
The NFLPA lawyer explained to the agent that the league was entitled to any information in Brady’s phone, but Yee refused to budge. The agent then informed McPhee that his team would deal directly with the NFL.
“I knew this was a huge mistake and that it would only piss Wells off,” McPhee claimed. “Don Yee is an agent, not a litigator. Tom Brady was about to get some bad advice, but he was loyal to Don so he didn’t question it.”
McPhee believes that Yee’s refusal to cooperate turned what was a professional investigation into a personal vendetta for Ted Wells.
Brady thought he was in good hands. He escaped the snow and cold of New England for a family trip to Costa Rica, where he dove off a cliff, much to the dismay of his coaches and fans, rode horses with Gisele, and chased their kids across the beach. The weather was beautiful and there were no storm clouds in sight. Number 12 appeared to be blocking everything out to spend quality time with his family.
Meanwhile, Ted Wells kept working.
On May 6, 2015, Wells released a 243-page report outlining the NFL’s case against Tom Brady. Investigators had interviewed nearly seventy witnesses, including the Patriots quarterback and head coach. The report stated that all eleven footballs used by the Patriots in the 2015 AFC title game against the Colts had tested below the minimum air pressure level of 12.5 psi, while the four Colts balls tested measured within the 12.5 to 13.5 psi allowed by the league.77
But was it a deliberate act? Ted Wells and his team, which included NFL executive vice president Jeff Pash, concluded that it was “more probable than not” that Patriots employees Jim McNally, the team’s official locker room attendant, and equipment assistant John Jastremski colluded in a deliberate effort to break the rules. Most important, the report stated that it was more probable than not that Tom Brady himself was at least generally aware of the plot. Referee Walt Anderson went on the record to say that McNally had violated pregame protocol by taking the balls out of the officials’ locker room without permission. It was the first time in Anderson’s nineteen years in the league that he could not locate the game balls at the start of the game. The videotaped surveillance showed that McNally carried two large bags of footballs down the center tunnel toward the playing field and made a curious pit stop into a bathroom, where he locked the doo
r and remained inside for approximately one minute and forty seconds. The video showed him then leaving the bathroom with the ball bags and heading to the field.
According to Wells, the real smoking gun against number 12 could be found in the dozens of text and phone records retrieved from the key players in the case, specifically those of McNally and Jastremski. NFL investigators found a disturbing thread of texts between the two equipment guys dating back to the 2014 off-season. In May of that year, the pair exchanged texts about what would become a running theme between the two: McNally’s demand for free stuff from Brady.
McNally: you working?
Jastremski: yup.
McNally: nice dude…jimmy needs some new kicks…lets make a deal…come on help the deflator.
McNally: Chill buddy im just fuckin with you…im not going to espn…yet…
The word deflator jumped out to investigators. Wells and his team also found it damning that McNally had offered a veiled threat to go to ESPN.
Two questions needed answers. Why did McNally refer to himself as the “deflator,” and what information did he threaten to give the television sports network?
The text conversations continued into the season after a Thursday night game between the Patriots and Jets in October 2014, when Brady complained angrily about the inflation levels of the footballs. The quarterback’s criticism was met with scorn by McNally.
McNally: Tom sucks. I’m going to make that next ball a fucking balloon.
Jastremski: Talked to him last night. He actually brought you up and said you must have a lot of stress trying to get them done…
Jastremski: I told him it was. He was right though…
Jastremski: I checked some of the balls this morning. The refs fucked us…a few of then [them] were at almost 16.
Jastremski: They didn’t recheck then [them] after they put air in them.
McNally: Fuck tom…16 was nothing…wait til next Sunday.
Jastremski: Omg. Spaz!
McNally blasted Brady over the next several days in texts to Jastremski. He threatened to blow up the footballs to the size of rugby balls and even watermelons. When Jastremski pointed out that the texts sounded so angry, McNally replied, The only thing deflating sun [son]…is his [Brady’s] passer rating. According to the texts, he later asked the quarterback for cash and new “kicks” (sneakers). If Brady didn’t come through with the items, McNally warned his friend Jastremski that it would be a “rugby Sunday.”
In January 2015, McNally continued to press Jastremski to ensure that Brady delivered the new sneakers plus some autographed footballs.
McNally: Remember to put a couple of sweet pigskins ready for tom to sign
Jastremski: You got it kid…big autograph day for you.
McNally: nice…throw some kicks in and make it real special.
Jastremski: it [if] yur lucky. 11?
McNally: 11 or 11 and half kid.
McNally eventually received an autographed jersey and two signed footballs from Brady.
The conversations between Jastremski and McNally were alarming and did not bode well for Brady’s case. But the evidence was circumstantial at best. Ted Wells needed science to back up his claim that the footballs used by the Patriots in the AFC title game did not lose air pressure naturally over the course of the game. He hired a Menlo Park, California–based company called Exponent to dig in further. Researchers at a company site in Phoenix, Arizona, used a forty-foot-long thermal chamber to re-create the environment inside Gillette Stadium on that fateful night. The chamber floor was covered in green artificial turf and the temperature inside was set at forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. In another windowless space, they attempted to re-create the exact setting of the officials’ locker room at Gillette, where the balls would have been at room temperature.78
Four primary Exponent scientists spent three months on their part of the investigation. After several experiments, they concluded that “the reduction of pressure of the Patriots game balls cannot be explained completely by basic scientific principles.”79 Those scientific principles included what is known as the Ideal Gas Law, which suggested that a given mass and constant volume of a gas, plus pressure exerted on both sides of an object, was directly proportionate to its absolute temperature. It was a wonky way of stating that the pressure drop of the Patriots balls was greater than the pressure drop of the Colts footballs in the exact same climate. Scientists also simulated how quickly someone could deflate thirteen balls and found that the task could indeed have been completed in the minute and forty seconds Jim McNally was alone in the bathroom with the Patriots’ footballs.
The finger of suspicion was clearly pointed at McNally and Jastremski, but did they act alone?
The Wells Report could not offer a definitive answer but concluded that Brady was most likely involved. Investigators pointed to the volume of telephone and text conversations between number 12 and Jastremski right after the Deflategate story broke. Neither had communicated by phone or text in the six months prior to January 2015. Ted Wells also found it suspicious that Brady had then invited Jastremski to a private meeting in the quarterback room. It was the first such invitation in Jastremski’s twenty-year career with the team. Wells believed that the two equipment guys were merely lackeys who would not consider deflating footballs without Brady’s knowledge.
When number 12 sat down with investigators, he denied having any involvement in deliberate efforts to deflate footballs and claimed that he did not know McNally’s name or what his role was regarding game-day footballs. His testimony contradicted the fact that he was present when McNally received the autographed jersey and balls and Jastremski’s claim that he had spoken to Brady about McNally. Was the quarterback misremembering or was he lying? Ted Wells believed that Brady wasn’t telling the truth. The report also noted that Brady had refused to turn over his phone to Ted Wells. Heather McPhee’s plea that Brady cooperate with investigators had fallen on deaf ears.
The report was a bombshell, and reaction came swiftly from Brady’s fellow NFL players. Colts linebacker Erik Walden said it was “gross” that Brady resorted to cheating but also acknowledged that Brady and the Patriots put a “whupping” on his team during their march toward the Super Bowl. Former Broncos star Shannon Sharpe fired off a tweet demanding a severe punishment against the Patriots because spygate taught them absolutely nothing about adhering to the rules.80
Number 12 did have his defenders, and they were close to home. Chased by reporters for his reaction, Rob Gronkowski simply flexed his enormous biceps. Agent Don Yee released a lengthy statement that said, in part, “The Wells report, with all due respect, is a significant and terrible disappointment. It’s [sic] omission of key facts and lines of inquiry suggest the investigators reached a conclusion first, and then determined so-called facts later.” Yee pointed out correctly that the report strangely omitted nearly all of his client’s testimony and only summarized Brady’s response to investigators’ questions. Brady’s father, Tom Sr., expressed his outrage to a reporter from USA Today. “The thing is so convoluted; they say that possibly, possibly he [Brady] was aware of this. The reality is if you can’t prove he did it, then he’s innocent, and lay off him. That’s the bottom line.…This was Framegate from the beginning.”81
Number 12 kept a low profile on the day the report was released but emerged the following afternoon for a prescheduled speaking event at Salem State College, just north of Boston, with veteran sports reporter and friend Jim Gray. Like an embattled head of state, the Patriots quarterback rode a helicopter to campus, where scalpers were getting big money for tickets to hear him offer his first public words since the release of the Wells Report. Brady took the stage to thunderous applause from the sellout crowd chanting, “MVP, MVP, MVP.” He was tan, smiling, and appeared relaxed.
“Tom, it looks like you’ve picked a pretty friendly place to reappear,” Gray said, staring out at the adoring crowd.
As the applause died down, Gray opened with the q
uestion on the mind of everyone in the sports world. “What is your reaction, Tom, to the Ted Wells report?”
Before Brady could respond, someone in the audience yelled out, “Who cares?”
“I don’t have really any reaction,” Brady said. “It’s only been thirty hours so I haven’t had much time to digest it fully, but when I do I’ll be sure to let you know how I feel about it.”
Tom Brady the quarterback had become Tom Brady the politician. He had learned a hard lesson since fumbling while addressing the allegations in that initial news conference. This time, he did not misspeak.
“I’ve had a lot of adversity over the course of my career, my life,” Brady told the crowd. “And I’m very fortunate to have people that love me, support me. Life so much is about ups and downs, and certainly I accept my role and responsibility as a public figure, and I think a lot of it, you take the good with the bad…so we’ll get through it.”82
Gray asked if the controversy took away the enjoyment of winning the Super Bowl.
Number 12 smiled. “Absolutely not.”
But inside, Tom Brady was seething.
Five days after the release of the Wells Report, the NFL announced that Brady would be suspended without pay for the first four games of the regular season. In a letter to Brady, Troy Vincent, a former player and one of Goodell’s top lieutenants, told the quarterback that “there is substantial and credible evidence to conclude you were at least generally aware of the actions of the Patriots’ employees involved in the deflation of the footballs and that it was unlikely that their actions were done without your knowledge.”83
Don Yee vowed that he would appeal the decision to the commissioner.
The Patriots were also slammed with a $1 million fine, the biggest in league history. The seven-figure punishment was matched only by the fine levied against former San Francisco 49ers owner Ed DeBartolo Jr., who pleaded guilty to a felony gambling charge in 1999.
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