Ben Affleck Goes on Profanity-Laced Deflategate Rant on Bill Simmons’ HBO Show

Ben Affleck made full use of HBO’s uncensored platform when he went on an epic, F-bomb-filled rant on Bill Simmons’ new talk show, Any Given Wednesday, blasting the NFL over the Deflategate scandal.

The actor, who plays the latest incarnation of Batman, grew up in Boston — a native, like Simmons — and is a diehard Red Sox and Patriots fan. Of course both men love Tom Brady, so when the topic of Defaltegate came up, neither held back. 

“Deflategate is the ultimate bullshit f—ing outrage of sports ever,” Affleck began. “It’s so f—ing stupid that I can’t believe [it]. They gave [Brady] a suspension for a quarter of the season, which would be equivalent of suspending a baseball player for 40 f—ing days — 40 quarter days, to be exact — which is what they do when you get busted taking steroids. And by the way, if the NFL really knew how to test for steroids and HGH, there’d be no f—ing NFL.”

He continued, “So instead, what they did was suspend Tom Brady for four days for not giving them his f—ing cell phone and for having a friend who called himself the deflator. If I got in trouble for all the things that my friends called themselves, I would be finished, OK? You want to give a guy — because he doesn’t give you his cell phone— a punishment? I would never give an organization as leak-prone as the NFL my f—ing cell phone so you can just look through my emails and listen to my voicemails. The first thing they’re going to do is leak this shit.”

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Affleck said Brady, like anyone else, has too much private information on his phone to hand it over to an enormous, unsecured entity like the NFL. 

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s funny, lovely sex messages from his wife,” he said. “Maybe Tom Brady is so f—ing classy and such a f—ing gentleman that he doesn’t want people to know that he may have reflected on his real opinion of some of his co-workers — guys he plays with, guys he plays against. His real feelings. I wouldn’t want guys who I didn’t think were very good to know I didn’t think they were very good. I wouldn’t want guys who I thought were great to know I thought they were great. I’d want to keep my opinions to myself.”

Some viewers took to social media to suggest Affleck may have had a few cocktails before the sit-down. Apparently Simmons also saw these messages, so he cleared the air. 

“BTW – we taped AGW in the late-AM, Ben got fired up about DeflateGate during the convo, that’s it,” Simmons tweeted. 

BTW – we taped AGW in the late-AM, Ben got fired up about DeflateGate during the convo, that’s it.

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) June 23, 2016

Affleck maintains the entire Deflategate situation is the result of a conspiracy involving other teams’ brass who wanted revenge for Brady defeating them in the past.

“So there’s guys who work for the f—ing Jets and Broncos and everybody else who are now going, like, ‘Get him! Hang him!’ because they have some slight, flimsy f—ing pretense.” 

Watch the full segment below: