By withholding evidence from Ted Wells in the Deflategate report, Shaun Lowrie argues that Tom Brady accepted the lesser of two evils.

Are you sick of Deflategate yet? Me too.

Which part makes you most annoyed? If you're a Patriots fan, it's probably the merciless hounding of your star player and talisman, despite the apparent lack of evidence.

If you're everyone else, it's likely Patriots fans who can't accept the balance of evidence is strongly against Tom Brady. Yes, there's all kinds of questions about PSI, needles and other things that the NFL has mishandled, but it is the Patriots, and specifically Brady who deserve most of our scrutiny.

Before we go on, let's just get one thing out of the way: Tom Brady knew he'd be suspended. In fact, he probably wanted the NFL to suspend him. Why? Well it's good that you're asking, because I'll explain below.

Yes, Brady knew the team would suffer if he didn't cooperate fully with the Wells report, and he was willing to absorb those punishments the NFL handed out in the wake of Deflategate. When his agent Don Yee reacted like a selfie-taking bikini model pulling the 'shocked face' to the apparently 'draconian' punishment, it was simply his part in a big act of theatre from the Brady camp.

What is more to the point, Brady wanted it to be this bad. Ok, let's back up, he didn't want to be punished at all, but given the inevitability of league discipline, Brady wanted a draconian punishment, one that allowed him to appeal and protest his innocence, something that would get the tabloids and commentators (like us) scrutinizing the evidence, the due process and the extent of proof against him.

If Brady had been fined, it would of course have been a big moment, it would have sent a message that the NFL deemed him guilty of tampering with footballs. But then? Well, neutrals would have forgotten about it over time and simply assumed that justice had been done and Brady was guilty as charged. A millionaire is fined peanuts... big deal _people might rightly say. But what's that? _They're stopping him playing? Well, they'd better have some evidence for that!

The harsher the punishment the NFL meted out, the bigger the burden of proof in order to convince a sceptical public that Roger Goodell is not acting autocratically. In a year when his PR image has hit the lowest ebb, the commissioner is the ideal target for the Brady camp looking to undermine any discipline imposed upon him. When the 4 game suspension came through, they knew that plenty of fans and writers who are on the fence about deflategate, are most certainly not on the fence about Goodell - they don't like him.

Boston Herald Headline Deflategate

And so Tom Brady now gets to argue that the NFL doesn't have enough proof to hand out any punishment, and has wrongly interpreted the circumstantial evidence against him. His defenders get to argue this is a big conspiracy against their quarterback and his team, conveniently forgetting that Brady and the Patriots were in control of much of the information that the Wells report could have used to show whether he actually was innocent or guilty.

Which makes it all the more interesting, don't you think, that Brady and the Patriots withheld evidence that could surely have exonerated Brady and the organization, or at least increased the scepticism around the NFL's process. By not allowing the Wells investigators access to his cell phone however - as other employees did - Brady conceded what many will interpret as a sign of guilt. By the Pats blocking access to other employees for follow-up interviews, they too invite the legitimate question: What do you have to hide?

Not only that, but Brady, surely knowing the weight of other evidence suggested some wrongdoing on his part, was still prepared to have questions raised about his legacy, the legitimacy of the Patriots Super Bowl win and a whole host of other uncomfortable issues. The media firestorm and tarnishing of his career was somehow preferable when compared with whatever evidence is on his cell phone, or whatever the investigators could have got from Jim McNally, the staffer in charge of footballs on gameday.

Wow.

Just let that sink in. The greatest player of the last 20 years (arguably) and in the discussion for greatest player ever. A 4 time Super Bowl winner and 6 time participant in the biggest game, with only a few years potentially left at the top, and of course, wanting to maintain his credentials and legitimacy.

And he didn't want to do everything possible to prove his innocence? Huh?

Brady's dismissal of the request for information (Wells contends that he would even have accepted printed documents) underpins the argument against him. Forget about what happened against Indianapolis in the AFC title game, forget about which needle may or may not have been used, forget about PSI, forget about everything to do with the damn balls.

When push came to shove, Brady knew that the outcome of him releasing his cell phone data to Ted Wells was likely to bring about a worse outcome than any punishment the NFL could give him without it. Whether that's true or not, that is not only how it looks, but how Brady and his team knew it would look.

Think about Aaron Hernandez for a second (although lets obviously point out that thankfully, nobody has died and Tommy isn't on trial for murder). When you heard that he destroyed his home surveillance system and asked his girlfriend to get rid of a box of potential evidence when faced with the possibility the police might want to view them as part of an investigation, did you think those were acts that indicated guilt, or innocence?

More to the point, not only would Hernandez have known this would look like the act of a guilty man, but he was prepared for the idea that jurors would assume that whatever was on the tapes or in the box was worse than the act of him wilfully destroying it.

In essence, Brady has used the same defense as Hernandez in different circumstances. By refusing to allow people to make a judgement based on the empirical evidence that he has withheld, he opens up the possibility of endless theories as to how long or to what extent he may have potentially cheated. He knows this, but he also knows that by refusing to hand over the cell phone, he can cling to the knowledge that absent a smoking gun, Boston will always love him and he'll go to the hall of fame.

In my view, Brady got exactly what he asked for. You can argue all you like about the other aspects of the case, but nobody can deny that he obstructed the outcome - for better or worse. If he'd have handed that phone over and still received a suspension with no extra evidence suggesting his guilt, we'd be clamouring for Roger Goodell's head right now.

Right now, Brady's decision has left many unanswered questions. Just as he knew it would.