TB12 can no longer be a taciturn partner in his own Deflategate defense. His defense screams for his voice.

It's time for Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, facing an NFL suspension for his alleged role in what the league maintains was a deliberate plot to tamper with footballs, to speak up and speak out.

Silence is golden, but not if you're an NFL golden boy fighting for your reputation and fighting against a four-game suspension. Then silence is the currency of equivocation.

We've been awash in a cascade of opinions, statements, interviews, rejoinders, rebuttals, and recriminations since the Wells Report on Deflategate was released May 6. Words have gushed out and flooded the debate over the Patriots' culpability and their severe penalty. We're wading hip deep in rhetoric from the NFL, Ted Wells, the Patriots, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Brady's agent, Don Yee, and the NFL Players Association.


But we have still yet to hear a definitive word, written or spoken, from the man at the center of this more probable than not maelstrom.

No one is asking Brady to don a pair of glasses and go all Perry Mason, refuting the Wells Report point by point. But it would be nice for the quarterback to voice his innocence or issue a brief statement doing the same.

He could just communicate the same way he has all offseason, by posting a message on his Facebook page. Tom, just change your status update to wrongfully accused.

Yes, Brady is currently appealing his four-game suspension via the NFLPA and has enlisted the services of high-powered attorney Jeffrey Kessler. Brady doesn't want to do anything to jeopardize his appeal.

Fair. But issuing a simple statement with his name on it that says, "I have never directed anyone to deflate footballs. I have never knowingly played with a deflated football or violated NFL rules. I look forward to the appeal process," jeopardizes nothing, if it's true.


Silence is not an indication of guilt, but if you have been wrongly accused the tendency is to shout it from the mountaintops.

By not uttering or releasing a word refuting the Wells Report or the harsh penalty he received from the NFL, Brady is taking some of the air out of his defense, even if he never wanted it taken out of his footballs.

You can't try to stay above the fray when you're at the epicenter of it. A big part of this fight for Brady is preserving his image and his legacy, and that's tough to do outside of New England when you won't declare your innocence.

Technically, Brady has commented on the Wells Report and its finding that it's "more probable than not" that Brady was "at least generally aware" of a scheme by equipment assistant John Jastremski and officials locker room attendant Jim McNally to deflate footballs.

On May 7, the day after the findings of the Wells Report were released, Brady was at Salem State for a speaking engagement.

"I don't have any reaction," Brady said. "Our owner commented on it yesterday, and it's only been 30 hours, so I haven't had much time to digest it fully. But when I do, I'll be sure to let you know how I feel about it. And everybody else."

Sunday marks 11 days since the report came out. That's enough time to digest it and turn it into human waste, which is what the Patriots and their fans think the NFL-commissioned report is full of.


Still, Brady hasn't found the words or won't make them his own.

He also said that night at what looked like a celebration for the Church of Patriotology that he wanted to be "very comfortable in how I feel about the statements I make."

There have been no statements directly from Brady.

We've heard an impassioned defense from Yee, who made the media rounds and issued a pair of mordant statements that chopped down the credibility of the Wells Report and smoked out Wells.

Yee wrote "there was no fairness in the Wells investigation whatsoever" and called it "an incredibly frail exercise in fact-finding and logic."

On CNN, when Yee was asked whether Brady was completely innocent he said, "In my opinion, yes."

Some have pointed to Brady's statements on Jan. 22 as his public declaration of innocence.

However, that news conference took place the day before the NFL announced Wells had been retained to investigate the matter of deflated footballs in the AFC Championship game.

Circumstances have changed.

There were no damaging text messages from Jastremski and McNally back then. There was no evidence that Brady would be apoplectic about overinflated footballs in the Oct. 16 game against the New York Jets. There was no cry from the NFL that Brady failed to cooperate by turning over electronic communication that Wells said Brady and Yee would have been responsible for selecting.


Tom, this is not the time for a dispassionate, detached defense plan. It's not the time to let legalese and memos tell your side of the story. Your claim of innocence will resonate the loudest when it carries your voice.

Before the Wells Report dropped and the NFL lowered the boom on Brady, this had been his offseason of joie de vivre. He had golfed with Rory McIlroy at Augusta National, played basketball in the Bahamas with Michael Jordan, gone cliff-diving, thrown out the first pitch at Fenway Park, and in one whirlwind Saturday attended both the Kentucky Derby and the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight.

Brady was everywhere. Now, his innocence framed in his own words is nowhere to be found.

One of the traits that has made Brady arguably the greatest quarterback to ever toss a football is his decision-making under pressure, his ability to quickly process possibilities and determine the right move.

In this case, the right decision is to give his claim of innocence the most powerful and convincing voice it can have — his own.

Deflategate timeline

A look back at how the story developed: Rachel G. Bowers/Globe Staff

Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cgasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.