Tom Brady’s Agent: NFL “Shifted From PSI to the New Shiny Object”
After the NFL’s flying elbow drop announcement yesterday that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s 4-game suspension would be upheld, and Robert Kraft’s Taylor Swift-esque rant earlier today, Brady’s agent Don Yee is the latest to drop scathing criticism on the NFL’s latest press releases. In an interview with Comcast Sports Network New England, Yee talked to Pats Insider Tom Curran about, well, pretty much everything.
For those of you that have followed this since the beginning (and if you have, go outside while it’s still nice out and get yourself some Vitamin D), Yee’s quotes provide a little more context on several parts of the league’s decision and justification:
(Note: the rest of these quotes are straight from the CSNNE interview, because, well, they did the interview.)
“They shifted from PSI to the new shiny object, the cell phone,” said Yee. “We expected this. Because this was the easy way to pivot off the junk science and get off the PSI issue. And we knew that from a newsworthiness standpoint, the general public might be easily fooled. But in the coming days — just like the Wells Report being picked apart after its issuance — the same thing happens with this.”
Regarding Roger Goodell’s request for “any new information” that Brady could provide during his appeal, Yee had the following to offer.
“What happened is this. After Goodell decided to take the appeal and publicly asked for new information, we were under the authority of the actual commissioner, not private investigators with dubious authority. We decided to provide him with the new information. This was in June. The information that Wells requested covered September 2014 to February 28, 2015. The first thing we did in June was say, ‘Holy cow, do we have a cell phone left from that time period?’ because Tom regularly cycles through phones. We happened to find one and we tested that phone and found it covered the period October through November.”
“In a letter to Goodell, we told him that we don’t have any other phones that cover November through March. We believe Tom may have cycled through a phone. We were the ones that disclosed this issue. Meaning that if Tom Brady was trying to hide something, why would we voluntarily disclose that fact?”
Curran then asked Yee why Brady destroyed his phone if they knew NFL investigator Ted Wells would want to see the phone as part of his investigation, and Yee brought up a press conference with Wells that most people surely forgot about:
“It wasn’t until February 28 that Ted Wells’ team sent us an e-mail asking for contents off Tom’s phone,” Yee said. “They never asked for the actual device. Ted Wells, in his May 12 press conference actually said that — he emphasized that. They didn’t want the actual device. On March 2, we wrote back to Ted Wells and told him we considered his request for information off the phone and we declined his request. On March 3, they said they hoped we would reconsider. They knew going into the March 6 hearing that they were not going to get the actual device. They knew that.”
“Why did Tom cycle through a phone that week?” Yee continued. “It turns out he just got back to the country after taking a trip. Why did he cycle through the phone that week? The iPhone 6 was coming out. [Brady] happened to want a new phone and knew Ted Wells’ team didn’t want the actual device, they only wanted information from the device.”
Sure, rich people buy new stuff all the time just because they can, but the timing is still more than a little suspicious on that one.
Back on the “additional information” that Roger Goodell requested, Yee added the following:
“We compiled all of Tom’s personal cell phone billing records from his vendor from September through the end of February 2015. The records detail every incoming and outgoing phone call. Every incoming and outgoing text,” Yee explains. “We submitted that to the commissioner. They would then be able to determine were there any other communications with Patriots personnel that were not outlined in the Wells Report. Everything matched up perfectly with the Wells Report with the exception of three texts between Tom and [John] Jastrzemski on February 7, and that was only because Wells had given Jastrzemski’s phone back [on] February 7. As far as any texts prior to the AFC Championship Game, where any alleged scheming would have taken place, Ted Wells would have had any communications between Tom, Jastrzemski and [Jim] McNally. This personal phone billing record compiled by an independent third party shows that he had no communications at all with McNally.
“In an effort to be even more transparent, we decided to offer to the commissioner to disclose the identities of everyone that Tom communicated with. We said that some of these individuals are NFL-related personnel and that the commissioner has the power to compel a search of their phone to see if they have texts remaining on their phone from Tom. The commissioner’s own decision in footnote 11 acknowledges this and says they thought it was impractical to conduct this search. The amount of NFL-related personnel that the league needed to consult, if they so chose, was 28 people. Which is not very many people. And a number of those people they had information from already. Tom texted from December 24 to February 24 these NFL-related personnel. Ten teammates, two current coaches, five former teammates, one NFL Network personnel, five front-office personnel and five other Patriots employees. A number of them, the league had the authority to say, ‘Check your cell phone, we want any text exchanges between you and Tom Brady from that period.’ They chose not to. I don’t know why.”
Finally, Curran asked Yee why anyone that had text records with Brady would share them with the league investigators when they knew Brady wasn’t sharing the same information.
“Tom regularly deletes his texts,” said Yee. “It’s a privacy safeguard. E-mails and texts in case the phone is ever lost. But we felt, in our effort to try and give the information they wanted, ‘Well, perhaps other people kept text exchanges with Tom.’ I don’t think there’s anything more intimate than sharing your personal phone records as well as disclosing everyone you communicated with. If you had something to hide, why would you offer that?”
Do with that information whatever you will. Sure, it’s an agent’s job to spin everything in favor of their client, but is that really any less trustworthy than the NFL at this point?