In his initial statement criticizing the Wells Report on New England’s alleged football deflation, Don Yee, agent for Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, took aim at how the investigation started, with the Colts notifying the NFL of its football-pressure concerns the day before the AFC title game.
Wrote Yee last week: “What does it say about the league office’s protocols and ethics when it allows one team to tip it off to an issue prior to a championship game, and no league officials or game officials notified the Patriots of the same issue prior to the game? This suggests it may be more probable than not that the league cooperated with the Colts in perpetrating a sting operation.”
With Brady now suspended four games for the Wells Report findings and the quarterback’s alleged lack of cooperation with investigators, Yee again was critical of the investigation’s origins.
The Wells Report, Yee said in a statement published by the Boston Globe and other media outlets Monday night, “presents significant evidence the NFL participated with the Colts in some type of pre-AFC Championship Game planning regarding the footballs.”
Continued Yee: “This fact may raise serious questions about the integrity of the games we view on Sundays.”
The tenor of Yee’s Monday remarks regarding the genesis of #DeflateGate is similar to his comments to National Public Radio last week, when he opined that “there may be people within the NFL who have certain agendas as to how they want to see certain teams perform or how games be staged.”
The NFL, obviously, would disagree with Yee’s contentions. But Yee, of course, has a client whose integrity has come under scrutiny since the AFC title game. And now, Brady stands to miss four games and to be docked four game checks. Viewed that way, Yee’s remarks aren’t all that surprising.
And the NFL shouldn’t be surprised, either. When matters of character are discussed, accusations are bound to be lobbed from the other side of the table, too.
The league may believe its discipline for Brady righteous and essential to protecting the game’s integrity. But Brady’s integrity is going to be shielded, too.
