Internet Reacts to Stephen A. Smith 'Hearing' Tom Brady Destroyed Cellphone

Like a cat emerging from an all-night linen closet buffet, Stephen A. Smith looked his viewers dead in the eye and coughed up a wet wad of Deflategate hearsay onto their living room rugs Tuesday morning.

The Big Lead's Jason McIntyre posted video of Smith on First Take claiming he's heard New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady destroyed his cellphone in response to the NFL's request to look into his communications with Patriots equipment staff.

"I'm hearing that Tom Brady actually destroyed his cellphone," Smith said.

UPDATE

Maybe Tom Brady did destroy his phone! Or one of his employees!

The NFL released a statement Tuesday afternoon declaring its intent to uphold Brady's four-game suspension, via Gregg Rosenthal of NFL.com.

Fox Sports' Mike Garafolo tweeted another statement from the NFL addressing Brady's alleged phone tampering. The league says Brady "directed that the cell phone...be destroyed" around the time Ted Wells came to interview him about the deflating of footballs at the AFC Championship Game.

According to Garafolo, Brady told Roger Goodell he routinely destroys phones.

But it's not weird, guys. Brady does it all the time!

That's the NFL's side of the story, which lines up with what Stephen A. Smith was "hearing" this morning. We'll see if Brady and the NFLPA pursue this in court (as Smith, on his radio show, said he believes Brady will) or dispute any of these statements.

But for now, Smith appears to have been right. Congrats, Stephen! You heard right!

---End of Update---

Now, an argument could be made that "hearing" and knowing things are mutually exclusive phenomena. I might hear there's a chupacabra with the face of Nicolas Cage stalking the Mojave Desert, but that doesn't mean the Wicker Man is out there attacking cattle in southern Nevada.

But Smith just floated that rumor out there sans attachments—a bombshell, if true. A greasy coil of excrement, if not.

Yahoo's Charles Robinson quickly tweeted a response from a source within the Patriots camp, who claimed this was the first they'd ever heard of this kind of allegation.

But now the idea is out there, unconfirmed and twisting in the wind. It could be true. It could another case of Broussardian zeal.

One thing's for sure: Given recent anonymous source blunders at ESPN and Smith's penchant for taking for the sake of the take, people weren't too jazzed to see the allegation tossed out there with zero substantive backing.

"

Stephen A. "hearing things" = 99.9% chance he's trolling for self-inflation...again. #Brady #DeflateGate https://t.co/j4OBKfQXtw

— Will Reeve (@WillReeveJr) July 28, 2015"

"

"text messages are carried from phone to phone by carrier pigeon" - Stephen A. Smith

— OHB (@ohholybutt) July 28, 2015"

When in doubt, do it for the take—lest you not become the subject of national news for one week.

Dan is on Twitter. He heard they got a whole mess o' smartphones out Boston's way.