I still want to talk about Tom Brady and his Deflated Balls of Lies. With all of the lies piling up, you would think that balls would be super-inflated. Not so much. On Tuesday, Roger Goodell upheld Brady’s four-game suspension. Goodell’s reasoning seemed solid – while there wasn’t firm evidence that Brady colluded with Patriots’ equipment personnel, there seemed to be an abundance of evidence of a cover-up after the fact. The NFL report cited the fact that Brady destroyed his phone close to the time when he first gave testimony about Deflategate. I didn’t think there was a question about that, but apparently “the phone” has become central to this drama. This is how Brady explained Phone-gate in his Facebook post on Wednesday:

I also disagree with yesterdays narrative surrounding my cellphone. I replaced my broken Samsung phone with a new iPhone 6 AFTER my attorneys made it clear to the NFL that my actual phone device would not be subjected to investigation under ANY circumstances. As a member of a union, I was under no obligation to set a new precedent going forward, nor was I made aware at any time during Mr. Wells investigation, that failing to subject my cell phone to investigation would result in ANY discipline.

Most importantly, I have never written, texted, emailed to anybody at anytime, anything related to football air pressure before this issue was raised at the AFC Championship game in January. To suggest that I destroyed a phone to avoid giving the NFL information it requested is completely wrong.

To try and reconcile the record and fully cooperate with the investigation after I was disciplined in May, we turned over detailed pages of cell phone records and all of the emails that Mr. Wells requested. We even contacted the phone company to see if there was any possible way we could retrieve any/all of the actual text messages from my old phone. In short, we exhausted every possibility to give the NFL everything we could and offered to go thru the identity for every text and phone call during the relevant time. Regardless, the NFL knows that Mr. Wells already had ALL relevant communications with Patriots personnel that either Mr. Wells saw or that I was questioned about in my appeal hearing. There is no “smoking gun” and this controversy is manufactured to distract from the fact they have zero evidence of wrongdoing.

[From Brady’s Facebook]

A few points about all of this. One, Brady claimed that he always destroys his old phones every few months. Except that the pre-Deflategate phone was never destroyed. In fact, it seems like the only phone he took pains to destroy was the phone he used to text the equipment people when the sh-t hit the fan. There’s a record of the uptick in communication between Brady and the equipment people, just not a record of what they were saying/texting to each other after January 6th. Also, Brady’s big plan for retrieving his texts was to contact the carrier, get his phone records and go through them one by one? That’s so reasonable, right? And finally, everyone just thinks it’s insane that Brady’s argument is “no one told me I couldn’t destroy my phone on the same day that I knew I was going to be questioned about my communications!”

The consensus among sports reporters – even in Brady’s hometown newspapers – is that Brady is made of lies and that his four-game suspension is more about the cover-up than the actual deflated balls.

Last thing: Donald Trump thinks Tom Brady should sue the NFL for $500 million. Trump is apparently a big Brady fan, which seems like the final nail in the coffin of Brady’s credibility.

But Brady is still going ahead with the federal lawsuit against the NFL – go here to read. It’s basically his only move because he can’t admit, at this point, that yeah, his balls are deflated AND made of lies.

Photos courtesy of Getty, WENN.