New England Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady has avoided talking about his controversial football-deflating incident derisively termed “Deflategate.” But in a hilarious new TV commercial, the four-time Super Bowl-winner slyly makes fun of the whole thing.
The NFL punished Brady earlier this year for purportedly secretly taking some of the air out of the game balls used during the AFC Championship Game that followed the 2014 season when he led his team to yet Super Bowl victory. After giving up a legal battle, Brady eventually agreed to serve a four-game suspension for the incident.
Despite the major uproar over it all, Brady has stayed mostly silent about both the incident and his suspension. That is why his backhanded reference to it for this new Foot Locker commercial is so unusual.
The ad begins with two fans and Foot Locker shoppers entering a diner saying that the Foot Locker “Week of Greatness” sale just seems to get better every year. Then one of the shoppers says in a slightly accusatory tone, “It kind of makes you wonder what Foot Locker is up to.”
But as soon as they sit down at the counter, a bitter Tom Brady begins to lambast them about their definition of “greatness.”
“You know, that’s an unfortunate mindset you’ve got there,” Brady fires at the pair. “Just because something’s great year after year doesn’t mean something is going on. Why can’t some things just be great?”
The customer says, “It’s just a question.”
Brady goes on to grumble about how questions turn into “assumptions” and then “assumptions turn into vacations” — this a sideways reference to his suspension.
To cap it all off, Brady finishes with, “Why would you punish the ‘Week of Greatness’ for something that never even happened?”
It this isn’t a slam on all those who take Deflategate too seriously, what is it?
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.