Deflategate gets curiouser and curiouser and curiouser. Now the New England Patriots would have you believe that it wasn’t about deflated balls but inflated bladders and waistlines.

In an attempt to seize control of the narrative, the Pats now contend that the time equipment manager Jim McNally spent in the bathroom before the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts wasn’t about emptying balls of their air but emptying his bladder. And his “Deflator” nickname referred to his trying to lose weight.

You know that when men start talking about their waistlines and their bladders it’s a sure sign they’re desperate.

I think, in the end, however, that we shall discover that this is less a story about waistlines than frown lines and perhaps being a step slower and seeing the young guns who idolize you making their way up the ranks, standing across the field where you once were.

Tom Brady has it all except for one thing – youth. Turning 38 on Aug. 3, he’s actually a middle-aged man. (The life expectancy for an American man is 76.4 years. What’s two times 38? Oh.) ...

Paging Gisele.

Because Ms. Bündchen – a tiger wife if there ever was one – is all that stands between hubby Tom Brady and his squishy balls on the one hand and ignominy on the other.

As even the horses that ran the recent Kentucky Derby now know, a report issued by the Manhattan law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison on behalf of the NFL has concluded that Brady was probably aware that two lower-level employees of the New England Patriots were deflating balls.

Probably? Here are excerpts of text messages between Jim McNally, the longtime locker-room attendant responsible for the air pressure in Brady’s balls, so to speak, and John Jastremski, an equipment assistant who seems to have served as a go-between...

Deflategate – of waistlines, frown lines and men

Tom Brady’s shadow in the sun