The Patriots beat the Colts on Sunday by a lot: 45 to 7. Even better, the win sent New England to another Super Bowl, another chance for Tom Brady to grasp that fourth championship ring that’s eluded him. But for all the assembled media at Gillette Stadium on Thursday, only one number mattered: 12.5. That’s the amount of air pressure the Patriots were supposed to have in their footballs, but didn’t.
Greeting the press at about 10:30 in the morning, coach Bill Belichick was his usual stoic self: “All right, I’ll start out by addressing the football issue … ”
Belichick said he was shocked by the revelations and is cooperating with the NFL investigation.
“I think we all know that quarterbacks have preferences on footballs," he said. "There is never any sympathy whatsoever from me on that subject, zero. In my entire coaching career, I have never talked to any player, staff member about football air pressure. That is not a subject I have ever brought up.”
Reporters kept asking questions, and Belichick kept saying he didn’t know what caused the problem. But he did say he’ll overinflate footballs from now on just in case.
“We will take steps in the future to make sure we don’t put ourselves in that type of situation again,” he said.
For reporters used to getting little more than monosyllabic grunts from Belichick, it was a surprise he said that much.
“Gave us more details to chew on, and then kind of shut it down in Belichick fashion,” said WHDH Reporter Dan Hausle. “The interesting thing is, it goes from him saying, 'I didn’t touch it,' [to] 'I had nothing to do with it,' [to] 'I don’t know.' Well, then who did? And there’s been a lot of talk about the quarterback and the ballboy. So, basically, we’ll chew over Belichick for six hours, but get ready for Brady and ask for his handling of the football."
While they waited for Brady, the media moved as a herd into the Pats locker room, asking the other players about Deflategate. Did running back LeGarrette Blount notice whether the ball felt soft during the game?
"I don’t know what the proper inflation feeling is, but I mean, it felt like a normal ball,” Blount said.
They asked defensive end Rob Ninkovich if Deflategate was taking his mind off the game.
"It’s not a distraction at all to me," Ninkovich said.
And they asked special teams captain Matt Slater how he was helping the other players focus.
"There’s always going to be a lot of buzz outside of these doors, and we’ve been trained to ignore that, and we have to,” he said.
By the time Tom Brady came into the media room, hands in pocket and sporting a knit cap, reporters already had several hours to sit around and predict what he’d say. They got a lot of it right.
“I didn’t alter the ball in any way,” Brady said.
Brady took questions for over half an hour. He said Deflategate took him by surprise.
"I feel like I have always played within the rules, I would never do anything to break the rules,” he said.
Like most quarterbacks, Brady said he wants his footballs to feel a certain way, and he chose the 24 game balls for Sunday the way he always does.
“I don’t want anyone touching the balls after that," he said. "I don’t want anyone rubbing them, uh, putting any air in them, taking any air out — to me, those balls are perfect and that’s what I expect when I show up on the field.”
Brady said he didn’t think about the footballs again until Monday morning, when he was asked about them in a radio interview. He said if the balls were deflated, he didn’t notice — and he believes team staff when they say they didn’t do anything to the footballs. So, Brady said, he doesn’t know what happened.
"I have questions too," he said. "But there’s nobody that I know who can answer the questions I have. So I just have tried my best to focus on what I need to do to focus on Seattle."
As the reporters' questions continued, Brady said the Pats won the game "fair and square," and he’s disappointed the team’s accomplishments have been overshadowed by Deflategate. But if people choose to believe the Patriots cheated, he said, that’s their right. Brady said professional athletes know unfair criticism, and unfair questions, are part of the deal when they play the game.
