Joshv02 said:
The report says that Bird usually had access to the balls in the locker room while alone, implying that is where he normally deflated them. This time he wasn't alone so he took a potty break.
Which of course makes no sense (normally he sits in a room everyone has access to and deflates with impunity!), and of course makes less sense since after the Jets Oct 16 2014 (home) game everyone thought the balls were at 16 PSIG (he just forgot to do his job that day, clearly angering Brady). But, well, there you go.
What the report does do, however, is list 2 or 3 other people who say that Bird went out to the field on his own fairly often; but then it dismissed them for no real reason other than to say "I believe these other people more."
The Occam's Razor explanation for all this is so simple: Brady likes the balls at 12.5, he gets pissed when they're overly inflated, he tells JJ to tell McNally to make sure it never happens again and that he should get on the refs about keeping them at 12.5, McNally does pester the refs pregame but also sometimes gets told to fuck off by them or doesn't trust them, and when that happens he takes matters into his own hands by remeasuring them and letting a little air out to get them to 12.5.
In sum, the most likely scenario is that:
a) Brady never asked for balls below 12.5 or anything shady, just to pester refs.
b) Dumb and dumber decide somewhere along the line that its best to take matters into their own hands just to make sure.
c) McNally may or may not have done something shady in that bathroom, but if he did it was probably just to make sure the balls were at 12.5.
d) JJ and McNally lie to cover their asses during the investigation. This actually hurts Brady in the end as it raises suspicion and leaves the door open to a broader conspiracy.
e) Wells/Goodell are happy to run with this. They know that Brady is the target, not some clowns in the locker room. They purposefully leave out the most strenuous denials from Brady about ever wanting balls below 12.5 or asking for rules to be broken.
f) Abuses of scientific integrity are then perpetrated in the attempt to prove that the balls started below 12.5 when that was never even the intention and quite likely never actually happened.
