Tom Brady told Robert Kraft he is innocent
If Tom Brady lied to Ted Wells about his role in Deflategate, he also lied to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
In a lengthy interview with Peter King of The MMQB, Kraft insisted Brady has said the same things behind the private walls of Gillette Stadium that he has said publicly — he did not cheat or tell anyone to cheat for him.
“Because we had the discussion – if you did it, let’s just deal with it and take our hit and move on,” the 73-year-old said. “I’ve known Tommy 16 years, almost half his life. He’s a man, and he’s always been honest with me, and I trust him. I believed what he told me. He has never lied to me, and I have found no hard or conclusive evidence to the contrary.”
As expected, Kraft is still steaming over Brady being suspended four games and his team losing two draft picks and $1 million.
“I just get really worked up. To receive the harshest penalty in league history is just not fair,” he said. “The anger and frustration with this process, to me, it wasn’t fair. If we’re giving all the power to the NFL and the office of the commissioner, this is something that can happen to all 32 teams. We need to have fair and balanced investigating and reporting. But in this report, every inference went against us … inferences from ambiguous, circumstantial evidence all went against us. That’s the thing that really bothers me.”
Brady would have looked really bad if he lied to Kraft and Bill Belichick and the evidence ended up proving he was guilty. However, it only concluded that he was “generally aware” of what was happening.
Brady’s agent has expressed confidence that the Wells report will be exposed, and Kraft seems to feel the same way. At least one of Brady’s former teammates isn’t so sure.
Plenty of people believe Brady is lying. If he’s not, and you don’t buy the incredibly lame “deflator” excuse the Patriots gave, the only logical solution is that Brady told the equipment managers he wants the balls as soft as possible but never instructed them to do anything illegal. At this point, the NFL can’t prove that isn’t what happened.
