Tom Brady on #DeflateGate: “I Didn't Alter the Ball in Any Way”

Tom Brady said today regarding #DeflateGate that "I didn't alter the ball in any way."

Image via USA Today Sports/Greg M. Cooper

After Bill Belichick spoke with the media this morning, it was Tom Brady’s turn to answer questions about his role in the #DeflateGate controversy. Like his coach, Brady vowed that he was innocent in any foul play that may have gone on, saying that “I didn't alter the ball in any way.”

The quarterback took great pains to explain the way in which he selects footballs to use in the Patriots’ games, and that once he has chosen one he expects that it will remain untouched until he gets it on the field. “I don't want anyone touching the balls after that,” he said. “I don't want anyone rubbing them, putting any air in them, taking any air out. To me, those balls are perfect, and that's what I expect when I show up on the field.”

Of course, if he wasn’t the one doing it, then somebody was touching Brady’s balls when they weren’t supposed to. He ruled out the team’s equipment managers, who “know how I like it and that's exactly the way they are.” But who, then, is guilty of messing with these balls? That, we still do not know.

Brady insisted that he wouldn’t even have known there was something off with the air pressure had somebody not told him. “I'm not squeezing them, that's not part of my process,” Brady said of his pregame ball routine. “I grab it. I feel the lace, the leather. I feel the tack on the ball. That's really what you go for.”

So there you have it. Both Brady and Belichick insist that their hands have stayed far away from the quarterback’s precious balls. Now if only we could find out who did, if nothing else then to finally be able to stop using the same “balls” jokes over and over again.

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[via ESPN]

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