When Tom Brady made the decision to accept his Deflategate suspension, he apologized that the league had to “endure” the scandal. Brady also issued a mea culpa to “anyone whose feelings I may have hurt as I have tried to work to resolve this situation."
Throughout the previous 18 months, Brady proclaimed his innocence. The greatest of all-time took the NFL to court, where his suspension was vacated, only to later be reinstated. At that point, Brady’s message was clear: he wanted to move on.
But in the latest episode of “Man in the Arena,” Brady and his three sisters — Maureen, Nancy and Julie — revisit the most ridiculous scandal in pro sports history. They open up about the emotional toll the episode took on their entire family.
When the league’s faulty science behind PSI levels was debunked, Brady says he knew the inquiry was no longer about deflated footballs. It was about commissioner Roger Goodell affirming his disciplinary power.
“That was a lot about power and authority,” he said. “What it started out as, and what it became, were two totally different things.”
Brady made his feelings about the investigation clear when the NFL upheld his four-game suspension in an arbitration hearing (comically, Goodell served as his own arbiter). “I am very disappointed in the NFL’s decision to uphold the 4-game suspension against me,” Brady wrote on Facebook in July 2015. “I did nothing wrong, and no one in the Patriots organization did either.”
The fight continued for over a year. Judge Richard Berman’s vacating of the suspension allowed Brady to play during the 2015 season, only for an appeals court to reinstate the punishment the following April. Brady immediately appealed the ruling, but then announced in July he was ending his legal fight.
By that point, Brady says he felt like he was engaging in a futile effort that would only cause more anguish.
“There is a great line that I always kind of adhere to, ‘If you’re explaining, you’re losing,’” Brady said. “I never like going ‘but but but but … wrong! Answer wrong.’ I don’t need to defend myself. I’ve defended myself for a long time. I said what I had to say multiple times, in front of a lot of different people — in court, in public. I felt I had given them what they needed to make the right decision, but I felt like they had their mind made up.
“You gotta know when to fight, and you’ve got to ultimately know when that is taking too much out of you to fight. I realized I wasn’t going to win. It’s hard to beat 31 billionaires in court. I thought we gave it a great try, but in the end, just dealing with the results of what a New York circuit judge decided, I decided to put that behind me, and then move onto the next year.”
Brady’s youngest sister, Julie, put the family’s feelings succinctly: “The hardest thing is, Tommy is such an amazing ambassador for football. I just think it was a huge injustice.”
While Brady was fighting his own league, his mom, Galynn, was battling cancer. All of the four Brady kids thought the circus surrounding Deflategate wasn’t helping their mom’s recovery.
“There was a lot of pain during that time. A lot of stress during that time,” said Nancy Brady (second eldest). “Personally, I think that was difficult to see her son racked over the coals.”
Added older sister Maureen: “I think my brother just said, ‘Enough. This is enough. It’s just enough.’”
For the first time since Brady was in the eighth grade, he had the month of September off. He took advantage of his time, improving his skills and bonding with his son Jack, whom he took to the Big House to catch a game.
He also spent more time with Gisele. Before the first game of the season, Brady jetted down to Costa Rica, and they took their much-belated honeymoon around the beautiful Almafi Coast. Gisele spent the previous year-and-a-half sticking with Brady through the Deflategate saga. In a harbinger of feelings to come, Brady said it was time for him to take some of the pressure off of his wife.
“A very small gesture like that allowed me to recognize the things I need to do in our relationship to make sure she feels supported, too,” Brady said.
As Brady ages, it’s apparent he's become more concerned with building a life away from football. Deflategate accelerated Brady's personal evolution, and his relationship with the Patriots was changing.
