The New England Patriots and owner Robert Kraft are reportedly furious over what they consider to be key details that were omitted from the Deflategate report.
NFL vice president of game operations Mike Kensil was very involved with the Deflategate investigation from the start. He was present during the AFC Championship Game between the Patriots and Indianapolis Colts, and he was one of the people who received an email from Colts GM Ryan Grigson before the game informing him about the Patriots’ alleged tampering with game balls.
Shortly after the Deflategate scandal erupted, a report indicated that Kensil — who worked for the New York Jets for 20 years until 2006 — was the driving force behind the investigation. According to Greg Bedard of Sports Illustrated, Patriots officials claim Kensil walked up to equipment manager Dave Schoenfield at halftime and said, “We weighed the balls. You are in big f—ing trouble.”
Page 71 of the Wells report alludes to the conversation between Kensil and Schoenfield, though only to say that the two men have “different recollections of the precise sequence and content of the conversation.” Patriots officials basically feel that the exact content was important in showing that Kensil took joy in trying to catch them in the act.
Many of you likely view the exact language of the conversation as irrelevant, and that’s fine. Robert Kraft and the Patriots, however, insist that there were numerous details that would have shown bias from the league that were left out of the Wells report.
There is little arguing that the NFL owes an explanation for why the exact PSI of each ball wasn’t recorded before the game, especially since we now know that league officials were alerted before the game. Had the officials been ordered to log the exact PSI of each game ball, there would be all of this confusion about how much air pressure each ball lost.
Even if Tom Brady and the Patriots are guilty (and some of these text messages make it seem like they are), it’s hard to escape the feeling that the NFL chose to catch them in the act rather than warning New England and assuring a level playing field in a conference title game.
What people need to understand is that not all of the theories about Deflategate have to contradict each other. The Patriots could have cheated, the NFL could have run a sting operation to catch them, a former Jets employee (and others) could have had an axe to grind with them and Roger Goodell could have completely overreacted with his disciplinary action. That doesn’t make any of the aforementioned scenarios “right.”
