Thinking again about the texts, McNally's labeling of himself as "the deflator" doesn't do enough for me, since that could easily just refer to the fact that he's constantly deflating footballs during the week to get them down to how Tom wants them, which could be a legal limit (12.5). The stress texts don't get there for me either, since many people have stated it takes hours of pre-game preparation to get footballs right before they are handed to the refs, and Brady probably gets pissed at him if they aren't exactly right. Drawing a quid pro quo conclusion from the shoes comments seems ridiculous to me, so that's a no-go. The one text I'd really want to find out more about is the "I haven't gone to ESPN...yet." To me, that's the single strongest piece of evidence to support Wells' conclusion. The science is completely fudged in the report, particularly since we don't have pregame readings, we don't know which gauge was used pregame, Anderson would have reason to toe the company line with the pregame readings, etc. So the science isn't really persuasive, extra negative points to Exponent being involved there. But I'd like to know more about that ESPN comment. Surely, one of the individuals interviewed had to have given more context than Wells indicated, right? I'm sure it was more than "I was joking," too, which is all the report gives. Joking how? What's the rest of the context provided?
Can anyone else come up with a potential reasonable explanation for the going to ESPN comment? I know we're all grasping at straws, since we don't have any context, but I'm trying to find any logical context where it could not be incriminating.
Can anyone else come up with a potential reasonable explanation for the going to ESPN comment? I know we're all grasping at straws, since we don't have any context, but I'm trying to find any logical context where it could not be incriminating.