For Tom Brady, the feel and size of the football came into focus long before Deflategate. Brady joined forces with Peyton Manning in 2006, successfully convincing the NFL to allow visiting teams to provide footballs for their offense. Before the change, home teams supplied all footballs, meaning visiting quarterbacks had only pregame warmups to adjust to the size and slickness.

Brady sought Manning’s help because he felt a change by the competition committee would be advantageous for quarterbacks since most have specific preferences for how they like the football.

Former Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer told AZCentral.com that Brady also reached out to him several years ago regarding the footballs. He signed a letter for Brady to show support for a rule change.

The league continues to investigate Brady and the Patriots for using footballs inflated below league standards in the first half of the Patriots-Indianapolis Colts AFC championship game.

Troy E. Renck: trenck@denverpost.com or twitter.com/troyrenck