deflator/payment/ESPN texts

There's an email between Jastremski and his fiance, written in October 2014, where Jastremski says that the balls should be 13 psi. He has no motive to lie here, in a private conversation.

It's irrefutable, and Wells also agrees, that at least prior to October 2014, Jastremski was preparing footballs to 13 psi standards.

The texts you're referring to were exchanged May 2014, 5 months prior to this email. It does not make sense for the "deflator" to be referencing deflation to illegal levels below regulation, when it's already established that Jastremski was preparing them to 13 psi.

The payment/ESPN stuff is pretty clearly linked to McNally requesting and possibly receiving items (more specifically cleats or trainers) from the locker room. In fact text messages in this conversation that the Wells report convenient omitted from the report contains references to "kicks", and McNally pleading Jastremski to hook him up.

Brady destroying that phone but not his previous one

First of all, Brady testified under oath that all of his old devices get destroyed in order to prevent unwanted third-parties from getting a hold of privileged information -- family photos, endorsement communication, player contracts, you name it.

Secondly, the phone wasn't arbitrarily destroyed. It broke. He bought a new one. Old one was destroyed for security reasons, just like he does with any old device.

Finally, Brady's counsel did their due diligence by extracting everything they could, and supplementing it with metadata from phone bills and handing it all off to the investigators. At this stage the investigators were told by Brady's counsel that they would not have access to the device for privacy and NFLPA precedence reasons. As the newly released transcripts reveal, the Wells investigation actually had all relevant records from Brady. There were only three text messages missing content, but the only reason why they knew these message existed was because Brady's side handed over phone bills with metadata. In order to clarify the missing content, Brady testified under oath that the messages did not contain anything about deflation, instructions to break the rules, or any other violation of any sort.

At this point, with all these in mind, the physical state of the phone is completely irrelevant. All information has been shared already, and even if the phone wasn't broken, Brady was denying access to the device anyway for very valid reasons. The NFL or the investigators were not going to get their hands on the damn thing even if it wasn't broken.

The point being that Wells chooses to interpret things a certain way, but surrounding evidence does not support his interpretation. It's a common theme across the report. It was a paid and packaged conclusion, not an "independent" and objective investigation.