“I feel like I’ve always played within the rules. I would never do anything to break the rules. I believe in fair play and I respect the league.” 

-Tom Brady, Jan. 22, 2015

He lied right to our faces. Hundreds of media stared and watched. Football fans everywhere listened. And, according to the NFL’s Ted Wells Report on “Deflategate,” he lied to the world about his knowledge of letting the air out of game balls.

The damning evidence against Tom Brady, star quarterback of the New England Patriots, was the communication between the team’s self-dubbed “deflator,” Jim McNally, and assistant equipment manager John Jastremski, and between Jastremski and Brady.

The McNally-Jastremski texts implied payoffs of autographed footballs, cash and sneakers for deflating game-day balls to Brady’s preferred pressure point that fell below the league’s minimum standard of 12.5 pounds per square inch, making them easier to grip and pass.

The Jastremski-Brady phone calls and texts came after the Jan. 18 AFC championship game with the Indianapolis Colts, who questioned the pressure of the Patriots’ balls during the first half, triggering the post-game investigation. “You good Jonny boy,” messaged Brady. “You doing good.” What was said in three phone calls to Jastremski soon after suspicions of ball tampering became public may never be known. Brady declined to let investigators scrub his mobile phone even though he insisted he had nothing to hide.

McNally’s job as the game officials’ locker room attendant was to deliver the balls from Jastremski to the NFL head referee, who would then check them for the appropriate pressure. He’d then take them to the field accompanied by the officials, a protocol he didn’t follow on Jan. 18. That day he took the balls on his own into the stadium after the head official checked them for pressure, making a 1-minute, 40-second stop in a locked bathroom. The Wells report, released Wednesday, said that’s when he likely used an air pressure needle to deflate the 13 balls designated for the Patriots.

Despite Brady’s statements he knew nothing about any scheme to under-inflate the footballs, the Wells report found his claims “not plausible and contradicted by other evidence.” It concluded he was “at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities.”

And now the NFL’s quiet season is a hurricane, with smiling and lying Tom in the eye.

Before I go any further, let’s get the disclaimers out of the way. I like Brady, always have. For the first time in his life, Brady let New England down. I wonder if he or any of us can recover.

Look, I know all NFL quarterbacks manipulate footballs and do anything they can for an edge. Inflate, deflate, scuff, buff, whatever. They all do it.

But Brady’s fate took a dramatic turn for the worse back in January, a week before the Super Bowl win. He walked in front of a microphone and insisted he was innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

Minutes before Brady, head coach Bill Belichick did the same thing.

A couple days later, owner Robert Kraft angrily denied the implications that management was involved.

And later that week, Dave Schoenfeld, the team’s equipment manager, looked me right in the eye and told me he had no involvement or knowledge of any such ball tampering.

The Wells report cleared Belichick, Kraft and Schoenfeld. But not Brady, McNally and Jastremski.

The Wells investigators didn’t find a smoking gun tying Brady to the McNally and Jastremski activities. But they said the circumstantial evidence was too weighty to give him a pass.

“In sum,” the report said, “with respect to all of our conclusions regarding the Patriots, McNally, Jastremski and Brady, we believe the totality of the evidence, including the text communications, McNally’s breach of pre-game procedure, McNally’s disappearance into a locked bathroom with the game balls for a period of time sufficient to deflate the Patriots game balls with a needle, the post-game communications between Jastremski and McNally, the increase in the frequency of text and telephone communications between Jastremski and Brady post-game, the half-time data showing a larger reduction in air pressure in the Patriots balls as compared to the Colts game balls, which our scientific consultants inform us is statistically significant, together with other facts developed during the investigation and set forth in this report support our conclusions.”

And for that, this quarterback must pay. The Patriots? The coach, his teammates, ownership, the fans? They all become collateral damage, caught in this ugly crossfire from a hot-headed, championship-driven quarterback.

So good at reading situations on the field, Brady’s selection in this mess was an awful one, especially when he hung it on his teammates by telling them of his innocence.

And now, because of his obstinate stance, Brady stands alone.

Patriots fans are angry at the NFL. The heat should be placed squarely on their QB.

As the report states, “we believe it is unlikely that an equipment assistant and a locker room attendant would deflate game balls without Brady’s knowledge and approval.”

Brady is going to be punished. He might even be suspended. The guy was caught red-handed in a title game.

Yes, it’s a technical violation. But the cover-up and denial make this thing so darn ugly.

On this one, Brady stands alone. And for the first time in my life, I don’t want to be him.

Hector Longo covers the New England Patriots for The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, Mass.