It’s kind of nice to draw a cartoon that’s not about riots, police brutality, terrorists, Texans.

I woke up Thursday morning with an idea on this subject that I really liked. I didn’t want to draw a deflated football or to actually indict Tom Brady. The report is that he “probably” was aware of the footballs being deflated, though not proving his guilt. I do think it’s a little unrealistic that he didn’t know. I also think he totally flaked Thursday night when he was finally questioned about it. He could have been up front with stating he didn’t want to talk about it. That would have been a lot more honest than pretending as though he hasn’t read the NFL’s report.

Back to this idea I woke up with: Somebody else did it first. Usually when someone has a cartoon that coincides with a thought of mine I get real down about it, mope all day and I don’t get another idea I can live with until 1:00 AM. This time the cartoon that beat me to the punch was drawn by a cartoonist I respect so I tried not to let it get me down too much.

So around 1:00 AM I finally got my idea. The report came out Wednesday and I saw three cartoonists with two cartoons a piece on the subject. There were a lot of cartoons with something being deflated. I didn’t want to go there. From the two minutes Tom Brady avoided questions about Deflategate I felt he was really playing dumb. It took me several hours to realize that was my idea.

Sometimes when I’m dumb, I’m really not playing.