The New England Patriots have responded to the Wells Report with a lengthy rebuttal on a website created specifically for that purpose, wellsreportcontext.com.
The report, just shy of 20,000 words long, lays out the Patriots' case that key bits of context were left out of the report, released last week, that found it "more likely than not" that Patriots employees deliberately deflated footballs below the level specified by NFL rules in order to gain a competitive advantage, and that quarterback Tom Brady, the reigning Super Bowl MVP, was "generally aware" of those efforts.
The NFL subsequently suspended Brady four games, fined the team $1 million, and took away the team's 2016 first-round and 2017 fourth-round draft picks.
Among the Patriots' arguments:
• Pre-game football air-pressure levels were taken, but not recorded by referees before the Patriots' AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.
• The Wells report ignores what the Patriots say is a "scientific explanation" that the footballs deflated from a legal level over the course of the game.
• The NFL uses two different gauges to measure football inflation levels, and that the Wells report cited those gauges inconsistently, overestimating deflation levels. Because of this inconsistency, the Colts' own underinflated footballs were measured to be properly inflated.
• Text messages in which a Patriots employee called himself "The Deflator" referred to his weight, not football deflation.
The website also includes a page called " Professor MacKinnon’s Scientific Conclusion," with an argument from Rockefeller University Roderick MacKinnon, a 2003 Nobel Prize-winning chemist, who says "the Wells Report conclusion that physical law cannot explain the pressures is incorrect."
