New England Patriots’ Tried Putting Unapproved Kicking Ball In AFC Championship
By Cyrus Geller
The only reason I am covering this latest report in ‘deflate-gate’ is to simply keep up on the news. It’s stupid, the controversy is over, and I really just want to move on to the NFL Scouting Combine.
According to ESPN, a New England Patriots’ locker room attendant tried putting an unapproved kicking ball in the AFC Championship game.
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"A locker-room attendant for the New England Patriots tried to introduce an unapproved special teams football into last month’s AFC Championship Game, the same game at the center of the “Deflategate” allegations, four sources familiar with the investigation told “Outside the Lines.”One source said that the attendant assigned to the officials’ locker room, identified as 48-year-old Jim McNally, has been interviewed by investigators for Ted Wells, the attorney the NFL hired last month to lead an investigation into allegations the Patriots intentionally used under-inflated footballs on offensive plays in the first half of that game against the Colts, which New England won 45-7.Three sources said that McNally has worked Patriots games for a decade, and has been in charge of the officials’ locker room at Gillette Stadium since at least 2008. In the first half of the AFC Championship Game, McNally tried to give the unapproved football to an alternate official who was in charge of the special-teams footballs. Those footballs are known as “kicking balls” or “K balls.”"
This is just ridiculous.
Anybody knows anything at this point understands that this story is complete bogus, and the NFL seems to be doing everything in their power to milk it along, and leak every dumb piece of information possible. Not only has it been reported that only one of the footballs were severely under-inflated (and a theory has been going around that the Colts did it), this latest report insinuates the Pats willingly put in a kicking ball into normal rotation.
It’s unfathomable how dumb that is.
First off, kicking balls are generally inflated as much as possible, which, according to the NFL, is the opposite of what these cheating Patriots wanted to do in the first place. Second of all, giving Tom Brady a ball he hasn’t had the chance to rub up or inspect would only hurt New England, not help them. And lastly, the man that went in at halftime to check the footballs? Only Mike Kensil, former executive of the New York Jets. Do you really think he doesn’t want to stick it to the team that continually beats up on the Jets? Don’t be naive.
The bottom line is this story has been dead for a long time, and it really has just turned into a witch-hunt against the Patriots. And you know what? That’s fine. We’re the Super Bowl champions, and if the NFL wants to try to drag the Pats’ name through the mud, so be it. Intelligent folks know this is stupid, and we are ready to focus on the 2015 season.
They hate us, ’cause they ain’t us.
(Disclaimer: I don’t care if some of the details I ranted about turn out to be wrong, because with how inaccurate the NFL has been thus far with this investigation, I could talk about unicorns flying in from Jupiter and still be more right than them.)