Former Patriots Employee: Tom Brady Cannot Tell Difference Of 1 PSI In Football
BOSTON (CBS) -- Dozens or perhaps even hundreds of stories have been written around the country on Wednesday from prominent sports voices, with some going so far as to call for Bill Belichick to be fired or the Patriots to be banned from the Super Bowl for their use of underinflated footballs last weekend.
In the midst of all of these strong and underinformed opinions, CBS Sports' Jason La Canfora set out on a more reasonable quest -- one for perspective.
La Canfora attempted to gain an understanding of what types of practices are typically employed by teams regarding their game balls, and he spoke to a number of former quarterbacks to get their stories.
Among La Canfora's sources was a former employee of the Patriots, one who "is very familiar with the Pats practice and game-day handling of their game balls" and also "has no stake in the outcome of this investigation one way or another."
The source told La Canfora: "As anal as Tom [Brady] is about the balls, there's no way he'd let some ball boy or whatever try to deflate it to a certain PSI. Tom knows a football, and the way he wants it, like you or I would know a kid. But there was never anything deflating or doctoring balls during a game. He knows how he wants the ball going into a game and he's not going to take any chances of someone else messing around with a ball to get it right. As anal as he is about the way he wants the balls to be, he's not going to able to tell the difference of 1 psi or whatever."
He added: "I'm just telling you, that's not how it works. He wants those balls to be right going into the game. But D'Qwell Jackson could tell after he intercepts a ball and is running to the sidelines? It just doesn't add up to me."
La Canfora also interviewed former NFL MVP Rich Gannon, who called DeflateGate a "non-issue." Former NFL QB and current analyst and talk show host told La Canfora that "it really does seem totally ridiculous that this story has been blown so far out of proportion."
The story concluded that no matter what the investigation reveals, "we'll be left with more shades of gray than black and white," but La Canfora's early research at the very least shed some light on just what makes up that gray area.
Read La Canfora's full story here.