The Colts Are Apparently Mad That The NFL Lied About Deflategate And Tried To Run A Sting Against The Patriots Instead of Maintaining Integrity of the Game?
IndyStar – At halftime of the AFC Championship Game on Jan. 18, Indianapolis Colts General Manager Ryan Grigson received a call from the sideline on the press box telephone. After a brief conversation, he slammed down the receiver and stormed out of the press box with team Chief Operating Officer Pete Ward. We now know why. Grigson had just learned that the Patriots were using an underinflated football, discovered when Colts linebacker D’Qwell Jackson intercepted New England quarterback Tom Brady in the final moments of the second quarter. But the report by attorney Ted Wells, released Wednesday by the NFL, establishes that it wasn’t merely this discovery that prompted Grigson’s anger. It was the fact that it came after he’d done his best to head off such cheating.
On Jan. 17, one day before the game, Grigson sent an email to senior league officials that was direct and to the point.The Colts, he wrote, had reason to believe the Patriots were inflating their footballs to improperly low levels and the team wanted the league’s assurances this would not happen in its biggest game of the season.
Grigson sent the email to David Gardi and Mike Kensil, senior members of the NFL Football Operations Department. Gardi responded that Kensil would be at the game and would speak to officials. The email was then forwarded to NFL game operations personnel as an “FYI,” according to the report. Kensil also sent the email to Dean Blandino and Alberto Riveron, senior members of the NFL Officiating Department, with the message, “see below.” They raised the issue with referee Walt Anderson. In all, more than five NFL officials received the email.
Not to sound like a broken record with this shit but for me this is still one of the biggest issues of Deflategate. Something that the Wells Report just flat ignored. The NFL had every opportunity to head this off before it started. Just notifying the Patriots about the warning would have squashed Deflategate before it happened and maintained the integrity of the game. Instead not only did the NFL try to catch the Pats in the act (which they failed miserably) they flat lied about it. They also risked a mega storm of controversy if the Pats happened to be up like 40-0 at halftime and then struggled with the inflated balls in the 2nd half. Again this is from Roger Goodell’s mouth.
“The MMQB: Can you say that the first time that you heard about this was after the game?
Goodell: Yes.
The MMQB: You know that there’s a storyline out there that you knew about the deflating and wanted to catch them in the act.
Goodell: Let’s just short circuit this a little bit. I’m not going to get into what we knew and when we knew it because that’s part of what he’s investigating. … I can tell you that I was not personally aware of it until after the game.”
Just blatant in your face lying. Very reminiscent to the Ray Rice stuff when Roger Goodell said nobody at the NFL knew about the tape even though there is a voice recording of somebody at the NFL offices watching it and saying it’s horrible and it happened in a fucking casino.
Long story short Roger Goodell and the NFL are liars. They’ve proven it time and time again. Why suddenly should we believe anything they say? Why did everybody call them liars with the Ray Rice stuff but now believe this Deflategate crap? Mike Kensil and the NFL clearly tried to catch the Pats red handed. They knew about it beforehand. They failed miserably. They didn’t document the air pressure of the footballs before the game started. They had 2 different air pressure gauges that were showing wildly different readings. They didn’t measure all the Colts footballs. The list of errors goes on and on.
Yet somehow now they want the American public to Tom Brady was probably more involved than not despite any real evidence. Meanwhile they couldn’t come to the same more “probable than not” conclusion when Ray Rice punched his fiancée in the face and dragged her unconscious body out of an elevator because they didn’t see the actual tape. Double standard much?
Last point. The fact the NFL spent 7 million dollars (chance I made up this number) on this investigation should make everybody who isn’t an internet millionare puke. What a waste of time and energy. 7 million dollars on something that could have been avoided with a phonecall. And the only reason this became such a huge story is because the NFL kept leaking information and confirming the investigation. They built this storm themselves. The Browns and Falcons got punished for pumping in crowd noise with barely a whisper. The Vikings and Ravens tampered with footballs and nobody even knew about it. This became National News because of the way the NFL handled it. Because Mike Kensil wanted it this way. Because he has a long standing grudge and wanted to publicly embarrass the Patriots. They spent 6 months and 7 million dollars on a 243 page report that proved nothing except that Tom Brady likes underinflated footballs which everybody already knew to begin with. Incompetence at it’s finest.