Robert Kraft says he believes Tom Brady: ‘He has never lied to me’

If you believe Tom Brady cheated, as many do, then you also have to believe that he has lied to the team owner and head coach who have done so much for him.

What makes deflate-gate interesting — and what has made the story one of the most talked about in recent NFL memory — is that there are so many layers, and that includes personal relationships. You can turn it into a soap opera. When New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick asked Brady if he knew anything about the ball deflation stories in the media, Brady replied, “Absolutely not,” according to Ted Wells’ investigative report. Brady did the same with Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Again, if Brady knowingly cheated, he has now also betrayed the trust of two of the most important people in his professional life too.

Kraft had much to say to Peter King of The MMQB in his first public comments, outside of an angry statement when the league’s surprising penalties were handed down, and some of the most interesting included his conversation with Brady, who told Kraft he was innocent even when Kraft offered him a last chance to come clean if he did anything wrong, via King:

“Yes. Because we had the discussion—if you did it, let’s just deal with it and take our hit and move on,” Kraft said. “I’ve known Tommy 16 years, almost half his life. He’s a man, and he’s always been honest with me, and I trust him. I believed what he told me. He has never lied to me, and I have found no hard or conclusive evidence to the contrary.”

Even for those who believe the Wells report’s so-called evidence is thin at best and that the NFL has punished the Patriots too excessively in an attempt to curry public favor rather than follow any kind of precedent, it’s very hard to believe that Brady had absolutely no knowledge of anything. Not necessarily that he masterminded the whole scheme and deserves the four-game suspension he got, because Wells spent three months investigating and found nothing to prove that was the case, but that Brady knew something. But given the chance to admit to something to the coach who he has written an incomparable legacy with, or to an an owner who has also been with him for four Super Bowl titles, Brady has continued to maintain complete innocence.

Don’t forget that, even though deflate-gate has been discussed to the point of exhaustion, the one compelling figure remaining is Kraft because nobody is sure about his next move is. When asked directly if he’d go to court, Kraft continued that mystery by telling King, “I’m not going to comment … I won’t say.”

King wrote that in his conversation with Kraft, he “sounded alternately defiant and angry.” And, like the few impartial people who have read Wells’ report and can’t figure out how the NFL can match the punishment with the evidence, Kraft continued to question what evidence Wells really had.

“To receive the harshest penalty in league history is just not fair,” Kraft told The MMQB. “The anger and frustration with this process, to me, it wasn’t fair. If we’re giving all the power to the NFL and the office of the commissioner, this is something that can happen to all 32 teams. We need to have fair and balanced investigating and reporting. But in this report, every inference went against us … inferences from ambiguous, circumstantial evidence all went against us. That’s the thing that really bothers me.”

The league’s annual spring meetings start Tuesday, and that should be a nice and awkward get-together.

Kraft discussed a lot of things with King, and he also touched on Spygate, the 2007 videotaping controversy that played a part in the harsh punishment this time around. The Patriots last week were fined $1 million (the largest single team fine in league history), and stripped of a 2016 first-round draft pick and a 2017 fourth-round pick. When Kraft compared this to Spygate, it becomes more clear why he’s so angry: This time around, the Patriots don’t think they did anything wrong and they don’t think the league has proven otherwise.

“This is very different. In 2007 we did something and acknowledged the fact of what was done,” Kraft said. “This is an accusation of wrongdoing, without proof.”

– – – – – – –

Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab