Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has at least partially emerged from his reclusive state as his team prepares to take on the Steelers in Thursday's season opener.
This means that, on top of weekly preparations, he'll be expected to be a bit more candid about the deflated footballs case that took a giant torpedo to his offseason. Brady, for those who decided to take the summer off from consuming news, had what would have been a four-game suspension struck down in court.
On Tuesday, appearing on Boston radio station WEEI-FM, he did just that. Here are his answers to some of the more pressing questions ...
On whether Brady thought "DeflateGate" was a setup, considering so many pieces of the investigation seemed linked against him:
"I have a lot of personal feelings about this and to get into every conversation everyone wants to have, you know, in a way I've had a lot of these conversations with people over the last seven months. You get kind of brought back into those emotions and those haven't been the best emotions, they don't serve me as the quarterback of the New England Patriots this week, so I have to put whatever I have aside and try to go out and do my job."
On whether Brady will treat certain media differently due to their reporting on "DeflateGate":
"I think that is probably a pretty natural feeling to have. I don't know exactly how I'll approach those things each week. A lot of it for me this offseason has been to try and conserve my energy as best I can because, you know, you deal with things that are pretty mentally tiring ... so I'll need to conserve some energy this year, there's no doubt. It's a long season but the more things that I do non-Patriot related really to help other people out, those things take away from the energy I have to do other things."
Any regrets?
"That's a tough question and pretty personal, so, yeah, whatever has happened has taken the focus away from my team and what happened last year. So it should have been a very joyous offseason and I'm sure it was for a lot of people, and certainly was for me at different times, but some of those things are pretty personal."
Would you like Jim McNally and John Jastremski (the Patriots employees suspended in the wake of the scandal) to be hired back?
"Of course. None of those things are my decision but I feel terrible for what they've been through, what their families have been put through. I know what my family has been put through, and what has happened but I just feel terrible they're not with our team."
Would you have been willing to take a one-game suspension without admitting guilt?
"There were a lot of negotiations back and forth. We had five different settlement conferences with the league to try and avoid what has happened at this point. ... I think at different points there were a lot of different things that came up. I think I was advised not to talk about those things."
In terms of news not related to deflated footballs, Brady said that the Donald Trump hat that now appears in his locker was sent to him by the man himself. Brady met Trump while judging one of his beauty contests back in 2002. He is uncertain if he'll vote for the bombastic Republican. Also, the book that has gotten Brady through many hard times is called The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz.
