Apparently, Tom Brady's four-game suspension that he received for Deflategate just wasn't harsh enough for some people. For instance, take Reggie Wayne, who wants to tack on another small punishment.
According to the former Colts receiver, that punishment would basically involve making Brady ineligible to to win the NFL MVP award this season because cheaters shouldn't be allowed to win.
"There is no way Tom Brady can win MVP because he was caught cheating this year," Wayne said on the NFL Network's Total Access show.
To be fair to Brady, he wasn't caught "this year." He was caught in January 2015, which was almost two years ago, and if we want to be technical, the NFL never said he cheated. What the league said is that Brady was "at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of [Jim] McNally and [John] Jastremski involving the release of air from Patriots game balls."
That finding led the NFL to suspend Brady for conduct detrimental to the integrity of the league.
Coincidentally, the game the game that started Deflategate -- the AFC Championship after the 2014 season -- also happened to be the last game of Wayne's career. After that game, Wayne was let go by Indy, only to sign with the Patriots. Wayne then asked to be released by New England before the 2015 season started because it seems that he wasn't a fan of the "Patriot Way."
From source close to Wayne "asked for release, work environment to tough....not fun"
— Scott Zolak (@scottzolak) September 5, 2015
So there's that.
Anyway, Wayne should actually be looking at this from the other side of the coin. If Brady can sit out four games and still do enough to win the MVP, then that means he would've pulled off one of the greatest seasons in NFL history, which is exactly what he's doing right now.
Brady already leads the league in completion percentage, yards per pass, touchdown percentage and QB rating. He's also thrown zero interceptions and has gone 4-0, and he's doing all of this with properly inflated footballs.
The good news for Wayne is that despite those impressive stats, Brady still might not win the MVP. Our analysts here at CBS Sports released their midseason awards this week, and one of them listed Brady as the MVP. All other votes went to Derek Carr or Matt Ryan.
That's just for the first eight weeks of the season, though. If Brady continues his tear through the next eight weeks, there's a good chance he'll be taking home his third career MVP.
If Brady does win the award, he should make sure to thank Wayne in his acceptance speech.
