Fans of the New England Patriots will no doubt remain unwavering in their support of quarterback Tom Brady, but it seems the rest of the general NFL viewing public does not feel the same.
Brady has sunk so low and become so polarizing, in fact, that he's viewed in much the same light as golfer Tiger Woods, whose own popularity dwindled after it was revealed that he had numerous affairs while married to his wife Elin Nordegren.
According to a recent poll, conducted by E-Poll Market Research which gathered the opinions of more than 1,000 people "representative of the U.S. population," Brady's popularity has suffered greatly in the wake of the DeflateGate scandal and the findings of the Wells Report.
"The company's E-Score celebrity index shows that 47 percent of those surveyed now say they don't like Brady. An E-Poll survey taken in February, a little more than two weeks after the Patriots' win in Super Bowl XLIX, showed 32 percent of the respondents didn't like him at that point," ESPN's Darren Rovell reports.
This is in stark contrast to a survey conducted by E-Poll ten years ago which indicated that 90 percent of people actually liked Brady. After the SpyGate scandal in the summer of 2008, Brady's likability fell to 77 percent and according to a poll conducted in February of this year, his positive appeal had reached 68 percent.
Now that it has been revealed that Brady "more probably than not" was "generally aware" of the deflation of footballs used by the future Hall of Fame quarterback and the rest of the Patriots offense during their AFC Championship Game victory over the Indianapolis Colts, Brady's approval has sunk even lower.
"The company says the February decline was related to Deflategate and not just spiteful fans of other teams, as many who took the survey then wrote they were troubled about Brady's skirting league rules regarding air pressure in the footballs," writes Rovell. "That's combined with the fact Brady didn't see a popularity dip at any point during his other three Super Bowl victories."
Per E-Poll, the average athlete is liked by 86 percent of people surveyed - Brady's 47 percent dislike to 53 percent like ratio is the exact ratio recently given to Woods.
