New England Patriots billionaire owner Robert Kraft, crashed the his teams opening news conference for Super Bowl XLIX on Monday and said that if the NFL can't find proof that his team did anything wrong over 'deflategate," then the league should apologize to his team. That's another reason why so many fans can't stand the Patriots.
PHOENIX -- Patriots owner Robert Kraft made a surprise appearance at the team's opening news conference of Super Bowl XLIX on Monday, saying the NFL owed them an apology if its investigation over deflated footballs doesn't uncover wrongdoing. Here's the part that is really infuriating.
"If the Wells investigation is not able to definitively determine that our organization tampered with the air pressure on the footballs, I would expect and hope that the league would apologize to our entire team, and in particular, coach [Bill] Belichick and Tom Brady for what they have had to endure this past week," Kraft said, referring to attorney Ted Wells, who is leading the investigation with NFL executive vice president Jeff Pash.
Kraft, who did not take questions from reporters, fired back at how the story has generated momentum over the last week, saying in the prepared remarks he was "confident that this investigation will uncover whatever the facts were that took place last Sunday and the science of how game balls to react to changes in the environment."
Many football insiders and players have become very outspoken about "deflategate" because they know that the NFL and Roger Goodell have been very supportive and partial to the Pats and are delighted that this his erupted into a national story. Goodell maliciously destroyed the SpyGate tapes to protect the Patriots from even more damning public relations.
"This would be in direct contrast to the public discourse which has been driven by media leaks as opposed to actual data and facts," said Kraft, one of the NFL's most influential owners. "Because of this, many jumped to conclusions and made strong accusations against our coach, quarterback and staff, questioning the integrity of all involved. ...
"I am disappointed in the way this entire matter has been handled and reported upon. We expect hard facts as opposed to circumstantial leaked evidence to draw a conclusion of this investigation."
Kraft doesn't understand that since his Patriots were already caught red handed cheating in the infamous Spygate scandal (which resulted in a lost #1 draft pick and 750K in fines.) their past actions have been the cause of the rise of this story and not the media. It's also fair to say that its been helped along by a flatulent NFL, which was slow to do anything after the reports came to light as usual. They've interviewed over forty people and never bothered to interview Tom Brady. That's called shielding a valuable league asset, not investigating.
It will be very hard to find conclusive evidence to link Tom Brady or Bill Belichick to giving orders to deflate their footballs, but as I said last week, assume someone will be sacrificed.
As of now there's a hot rumor swirling right on cue.
“Deflate-gate grows more interesting with each passing day. Especially after Jay Glazer, a senior writer for FoxSports.com, tweeted the fact that the NFL is closing in on a Patriots locker-room attendant who may have taken footballs away from the locker room and potentially deflated them — and the whole thing could potentially be on videotape. The reporter’s Twitter page (@JayGlazer) is listed among one of the most popular URLs at the moment by Alexa.com, all due to his inside knowledge about the deflate-gate melee.
