Is Tom Brady’s legacy tarnished?

Jay Serrano

Despite the constant media attention and Internet commentators whining about Deflategate and how New England Patriots’ quarterback and four-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady is a cheater, this whole thing will soon be forgotten by the majority of football fans.

Brady was accused of deflating footballs before the AFC Championship game in order to give the Patriots an advantage.

What will be remembered are Brady’s four championship victories and numerous records that place him in the running for greatest quarterback of all time.

The main reasons for this controversy are the fact that the investigation has been comically mishandled from the start producing no clear evidence Brady had the balls deflated and, all of the evidence shows Brady plays with footballs that are inflated to the legal range.

The first comedic blunder was the attempted sting operation during halftime of the Patriots vs. Colts AFC Championship game. As part of the sting operation the ref’s made sure both teams’ footballs were inflated to the legal limit.

When officials checked the Patriots’ footballs at half time, they found them to be below the minimum legal air pressure. This would have been damning except that when the refs tested four of the Indianapolis Colts’ footballs, they had been deflated at the same rate as the Patriots’ footballs, according to profootballtalk.com.

The reason only four of the Colts’ footballs were tested is the refs ran out of time.

Second, it turns out that the men whose job it is to know everything about football aren’t familiar with the simple chemical concept that footballs lose air pressure when exposed to cold temperatures for extended periods of time.

Tests by independent labs showed that the drop in pounds per square inch can easily be explained by the chemistry of what happens when a ball is moved from a warm environment to a cool one, according to the New York Times.

Although the text messages in which a Patriots equipment manager calls Brady the deflator look bad, the scientific evidence that shows the balls deflated naturally outweighs them.

Even if you ignore the mountain of evidence that no tampering occurred, the indisputable fact is Brady posted better statistics with balls inflated to the legal level.

In the AFC championship game against the Colts, Brady and the Patriots scored 17 points with the under-inflated balls and 28 points with the properly inflated balls. These 28 points included a touchdown pass to the left tackle, a position not known for their ability to catch the ball.

In the Super Bowl against the Seahawks, Brady threw for 328 yards and four touchdowns against one of the best defenses in the history of football. He did it with footballs that were fully inflated.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of NFL.com
Tom Brady

So no, Brady’s legacy as potentially the greatest quarterback ever will not be tarnished by this overblown scandal. Not only is there clear irrefutable evidence tampering did not occur, but the statistics show that he plays his best when the balls are at the correct air pressure.