Brady wins. Kind of.

Yeah, well. O.J. won, too.

Which is to say a court ruling is only a court ruling, while the rule of public
opinion lasts forever. And so a judge can overturn Tom Brady’s suspension,
but he can’t exonerate him. Nothing will ever do that.

Oh, sure, there’ll be high fives all over New England today, from
Framingham to Southie to the Back Bay. There’ll be hosannas going up to
the sky from the Berkshires to the bayou, where various Saints and ex-
Saints joined Patriot Nation in a spasm of unrestrained glee.

After all, they, too, had suffered at the hard and imperious hand of Roger
Goodell. The man stepped on Who Dat with a hobnail boot in the Bountygate
business. Now he, too, was getting stepped on. Schadenfreude, it’s a
beautiful thing.

It’s also a massive con, in this case.

It’s a con because the ruling of the court was simply that Roger the Hammer
overdid the hammer, and overreached, failing to prove legally what everyone
outside New England  knows happened in fact. Today’s ruling overturns the suspension, but it doesn’t absolve Brady of anything. Someone still willfully let the air out of those
footballs, something the Patriots acknowledged by firing the two flunkies
whose job it was to be hurled beneath the bus. That the two flunkies decided
all on their own lonesome to do what they did remains a narrative only the
Brothers Grimm could sell, or perhaps Robert Kraft and Co.

If you think Brady had nothing to do what happened – if you think all that text
noise about the Deflator really was about somebody’s weight loss – then
likely you also believe the moon is made of brie. And that Brady deciding to
destroy his cellphone (and any incriminating evidence within) right before he
was due to testify was just an amazing coincidence. And that there is
oceanfront property in Nebraska going for a song these days.

The man cheated, and then tried to cover it up. He was successful in doing
so. And so, barring another reversal on appeal, he will be on the field in
Week 1 against the Steelers.

But cries of “cheaaat­er, cheeaat­er” will dog him everywhere he goes all
season.

And he’ll be greeted, everywhere he goes, by bedsheets emblazoned with
collapsed footballs and giant air­pump needles.

And he’ll look up, everywhere he goes, and see more of those flattened-
football hats in the stands on Sunday afternoons than Aaron Rodgers sees
cheeseheads in Green Bay.

Yes, Tom Brady is a free man today. He stands, at least in one corner of the
country, vindicated.

The poor guy.