I think the overarching principle here is that you guys, as football fans, are talking about this just like everybody else and their grandmothers are and honestly, it's truly deeply perplexing to me as to why any part of this story is a big deal.
I don't know if you've seen it, but ESPN's Sports Science did a segment on this issue. You can look it up on YouTube, but the conclusion was that, at best, the deflated balls provided a zero-sum advantage and more probably than not was a net disadvantage. What's kind of strange is that ESPN only aired this segment once. Once.
Oh, but you say, "it's not about whether it was an advantage or not, it's about the principle of the matter. He tried to cheat." Well, what we actually came to learn from the Wells Report was that during the Jets game, before the Bears game I believe, the refs had pumped up the balls to 16 psi. SIXTEEN PSI. What, just because it's over the legal limit it's okay? Goes to show just how important ball pressure really is. Anyways, so Brady got mad and chewed both equipment guys out about keeping the balls at 12.6 psi at any expense (12.5 is the lower limit). This is where Brady is in trouble. Not for wanting the balls at lower the legal limit to gain an illegal advantage, but for wanting the balls to be deflated to 12.6 if the refs overinflated them. All he's guilty of is circumventing procedure, nothing about gaining an illegal edge on the field.
"So how were the balls so far under the legal limit, man," you inquire. Well, there's a saying that I like to keep in mind just to keep my self from getting too cynical, but also to help me feel smarter than I really am, and it goes, "Do not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." What most likely happened was that McNally was careless when he tried to deflate the balls to 12.6 psi (because he was already fed up with asshole boss version of Brady) and ended up going under and that the change in atmospheric conditions tacked on another ~.4 in the decrease. And voila. That's probably exactly what happened to a T. That's it.
I'll also add in that if Tom did lie, if he would admit, in his press conference months ago, it was probably because he knew what he wanted of the ball boys in relation to the tampering rules, not inflation rules, was illegal, but not really a big enough issue to convict yourself of a worse charge. But honestly, I'd bet he's firm in his belief that he knew - and made it known - he never wanted the balls to be under the limit, therefore he should not be convicted on that charge.
Essentially, he knows he's being charged for a crime different from the one he actually committed. He should receive a 25,000 dollar fine for ball tampering and the NFL could call it a day. But in an hysterically ironic way, it was the NFL that performed "conduct detrimental to the league" just by putting itself through this whole process. Not for tarnishing it's most decorated superstar player of the last 15 years by the way, but for simply shooting itself in the foot every single day it didn't hand Brady a 25k fine.