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Tom Brady on Foot Locker Deflategate commercial: I don’t know what I was thinking

"Deflategate" commercial
Tom Brady stars in Foot Locker "Deflategate" commercial 00:44

Reactions to Tom Brady’s Footlocker commercial making light of the Deflategate scandal have the Patriots quarterback looking to explain himself. 

In an ad for the sneaker retailer that went viral this week, Brady made fun of the scandal -- though he didn’t mention it by name -- chiding skeptical Foot Locker customers for questioning the brand’s success. 

“Just because something’s great year after year doesn’t mean anything’s going on,” he said in the ad. “Why can’t some things just be great? It starts with questions, and then questions turn into assumptions, and then assumptions turn into vacations.”

The scandal -- related to questions about the air pressure in footballs -- resulted in Brady receiving a four-game suspension carried out at the start of the 2016 season. 

“I don’t exactly know what was going through my mind when I made the decision,” Brady said when asked about doing the commercial, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

One possible explanation, according to Brady, is that his participation in the commercial might have been a direct result of his suspension, as production for the ad apparently took place during that forced downtime. 

“I had a lot of free time on my hands at the beginning of the year,” Brady said. “So I had to find ways to fill it.”

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