For a while Ben Affleck was the butt of a lot of jokes, but he’s turned his career completely around over the last few years. The summer season began with Affleck taking center stage in Batman vs. Superman, Dawn of Justice, which is one of my favorite superhero movies of all time and Affleck, unquestionably, is the best Batman to ever be put to film.
But I come to bury Ben Affleck, not to praise him. For he is from Boston and, like every other person from Boston, completely devoid of any intellectual honesty when it comes to the New England Patriots and the “so classy” Tom Brady.
Affleck appeared on the inaugural episode of Bill Simmons’ new HBO show, Any Given Wednesday, to discuss his career and sports, but mainly to go on a profanity-laced defense of Classy Tom Brady’s role in the DeflateGate scandal. Here it is.
A lot of people have accused Affleck of being drunk here, but that’s just because they didn’t watch the hole show. Affleck was perfectly normal and fine until the subject of DeflateGate came up. That’s when he completely lost it, slurring his words, losing his vocabulary and audibly holding back tears by the end of the rant. This man loves Tom Brady like you love your mamaw and pop-pop. He can do no wrong.
And, hey, I get it. I feel the same way about former St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner. If you want to get me slurring words and my voice cracking, start talking about how effing stupid the Rams were when the chucked Warner for Marc Bulger in 2004 only to have Warner take another team to the Super Bowl while the Rams crashed into one of the worst losing streaks in franchise history… and it’s still not over. I’m still pissed off about it.
But loving Kurt Warner and wanting to hug him long enough to make him uncomfortable in public doesn’t make me stupid. I want to show you a play. It’s the game-winning touchdown pass from Warner to Isaac Bruce in Super Bowl 34.
Notice anything about that play? Maybe No. 81 for the Rams, Az-Zahir Hakim blocking Samari Rolle in the back? If you missed it watch it again. it literally happens right after Bruce catches the pass and puts a move on Blaine Bishop that cost him a pair of socks, a cup and a Super Bowl ring. The refs didn’t call it. If they had, it would have still be firs down Rams somewhere near midfield and we probably would have had a much less dramatic ending than Mike Jones tackling Kevin Dyson at the one yard line as time expired.
But they didn’t call it. And I’m OK with that. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. So this is what I’d like to tell Affleck and every Pats fan in America, but especially in Boston, your love doesn’t have to make you stupid.
So let’s look at Affleck’s accusations and see how they stack up to what actually happened.
The punishment is equal to taking steroids. And the NFL’s steroid and HGH testing is a joke.
They came to that four-game number because Brady, by ordering a couple of Patriots flunkies to deflate footballs, was trying to get a competitive advantage. Players take steroids and HGH for the same reason. It’s why Ray Lewis sprayed himself with crushed up deer antler velvet and James Harrison pays a lady to jab 472 needles into his ass. Some things are legal, some art. Deflating the footballs is not.
BTW – we taped AGW in the late-AM, Ben got fired up about DeflateGate during the convo, that's it.
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) June 23, 2016
Brady was suspended for not giving up his cell phone
No, he was never asked to surrender his cell phone. Affleck is right that the NFL had no right to that phone, but there was a compromise. The league asked Brady and his lawyer, Don Yee, to provide them just with emails and texts to the two flunkies, especially after he was busted in the AFC Championship game against the Colts. Yee and Brady refused and Brady trashed his cell phone. This isn’t speculation on my part. It’s what happened. Here’s an interview with Yee where he explains it.
“Finally, any information we would have provided, and the Wells investigative team did ask us to go through Tom’s phone on our own and provide them with information if we chose to go that route,” Yee said. “But as you might surmise if we would have chosen to go that route, any information we would have given them, they probably would have had skepticism about anyway.”
Brady’s friend was “The Deflator”
Now, really? Are we going to argue about this, Ben? First off, calling some Patriots ball guy Brady’s “friend” is a stretch, as I’m sure he’s probably not even received so much as an iTunes gift card from Classy Tom since he was fired over a year ago. Second, he was “The Deflator” because he was the guy in charge of deflating footballs. Again, don’t be stupid.
(1/2) For those of you keeping score at home, I gave exactly 18 f*cks about my Pats. Upon reflection, 12 probably would have been sufficient
— Ben Affleck (@BenAffleck) June 23, 2016
“Maybe Tom Brady is so f—-ing classy and is such a f—-ing gentleman that he doesn’t want people to know he might have reflected on his opinion of some of coworkers… guys he plays with and guys he plays against, he’s real feelings.”
Again, the NFL didn’t ask for that. They didn’t want to know what he thought of J.J. Watt’s aftershave, Rob Gronkowski’s tinder profile or how his hand smells after he puts it under center Bryan Stork’s ass. They asked for football-related texts and emails that Brady sent to the two morons he had working for him.
There was a whisper less air pressure in those balls
The Wells Report actually has all the numbers from the measurements. Only one of the balls was even close to the 12.5 PSI minimum the NFL requires. The next closest was 11.8, nearly a pound below the legal limit and all the rest were worse than that. One was 10.5 PSI. Two pounds is not a “whisper” unless the guy whispering as Tourette’s.
(2/2) We Boston fans have always been known for our subtlety. One of my favorite interviews; hope you get to see the entire episode. #GoPats
— Ben Affleck (@BenAffleck) June 23, 2016
It’s a conspiracy of people in the NFL that all come from organizations that Tom Brady whipped their ass for the last 10 or 15 years.
Yes. It really was. Not that Brady deflated the balls. He’s guilty of that, but the desire to punish Brady and the Patriots absolutely was brought about by other NFL owners getting in Goodell’s ear. But it’s not because the Patriots beat them. It was from the way Goodell covered up for them over SpyGate. Everyone knows they got off easy from that one. Some owners wanted a make-up call and this is their chance. Frankly, Pats fans, you should take it. The truth is that the Patriots should have been stripped of all three Super Bowl titles won in that span and Bill Belichick should have been banned from the NFL for life. You got off way easy. Suck it up.
Goodell doesn’t have the integrity… doesn’t have the decency to admit he was wrong
Goodell doesn’t have integrity, period. He’s a horrible commissioner and a coward. It’s why he literally burned the SpyGate evidence to keep it from ever seeing the light of day. He’s the worst. We can agree on that.
I hope I’ve helped, Ben. Maybe one day you’re idly Googling yourself and you come across this article and it helps you sleep a little better at night. Brady can eat a four-game suspension, be guilty of ordering a couple of nincompoops to deflate footballs and it can have no effect on your love for him. How do you like them apples?
