New England Patriots: Making Sense Of The Deflated Footballs Situation

If you like football at all, and you haven’t been living under a rock the past few days, you know about “deflate-gate”. The New England Patriots used 11 under-inflated footballs during their win over the Colts on Sunday, and the NFL is investigating into it further.

Now, I’m going to try to keep my personal emotions out of this piece, because if I get going on that rant, I’ll drag on for 1,000 words. Let’s just try to stick to the facts right now, so here’s a brief rundown:

• Colts suspicious of deflated football after Brady pick in first half, then talk to NFL about investigation.
• Officials test footballs at halftime, realize they are under-inflated. Take balls out of rotation.
• Patriots (with the fully inflated balls) outscore the Colts 28-0 in the second half.
• Chris Mortensen officially reports the NFL found New England used 11 under-inflated balls on Sunday.

If you hate the Patriots, it’s really easy to just pile on right now and proclaim them cheaters. However, if you actually use your brain for two seconds, you will realize there is a very good chance they aren’t at fault here. I mean, how is it possible that for an entire half, the NFL officials, who handle the ball on every damn play, couldn’t feel that it was 16% under-inflated?

Seriously. This story is just straight up bizarre. There is no proof the Patriots intentionally deflated them, and in my opinion, I don’t see how the NFL can come up with concrete evidence to convict them of that. And even if they do, the Pats will be subject to a $25,000 fine, which is equivalent to the fine you have to pay for WEARING THE WRONG COLORED CLEATS.

Ugh, this is frustrating. And on top of that, the Minnesota Vikings were caught heating up footballs on the bench earlier in the year (they were told to stop), and Aaron Rodgers publicly told CBS he over-inflates his footballs, even sometimes seeing if he can go over the limit.

But when it involves the Patriots, they should be stripped of their AFC Championship, and Bill Belichick should be fired.

Bob Kravitz is the incredibly unbiased Indianapolis columnist who also thinks Belichick should be suspended from the Super Bowl if he isn’t fired.

The bottom line is there is no evidence the Patriots purposely deflated the balls, and even if they did, I don’t see why it makes such a big difference. They obliterated the Colts in every sense of the word on Sunday night, and they probably would have still won by double digits if Brady hadn’t thrown a single pass all game long.

I’ll leave you with this stat showing Brady improving in the second half, AFTER the deflated balls reportedly came out of the game: