Bill Belichick confirms footballs were underinflated in Patriots-Chiefs game
FOXBOROUGH, Mass – The New England Patriots are wrapped up in another Deflategate scandal. However, this time, it is certainly not their fault. And Bill Belichick spoke about this viral report on Friday. “Yeah, we were aware of it in the first quarter,” Belichick said. “The officials handle that and they were underinflated by 2-2.5 […]
FOXBOROUGH, Mass – The New England Patriots are wrapped up in another Deflategate scandal.
However, this time, it is certainly not their fault. And Bill Belichick spoke about this viral report on Friday.
“Yeah, we were aware of it in the first quarter,” Belichick said. “The officials handle that and they were underinflated by 2-2.5 pounds. I think you can see that by the kicks. Both kickers missed kicks. Butker hadn’t missed a kick all year. Kickoffs, we had two almost went out of bounds."
"And so there were six balls. It was both sets of balls. It was all six of them. You’d have to talk to the league about what happened, because we don’t have anything to do with that part of it," Belichick added. "They control all of that. And they fixed them at halftime but didn’t do it before then, which is another question you could ask. But we don’t have anything to do with it. Were we aware of it? Yeah, definitely. But they were all, as I understand it, they were all the same.”
This came after MassLive's Mark Daniels released a report earlier this week detailing that the footballs used during Sunday's game between the Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs were underinflated.
The Patriots were first to realize this after noticing something very peculiar during the opening kickoff, with Harrison Butker's kick landing on the 3-yard line.
Even after the opening kickoff, things still weren't making sense about the kicking game, with the trajectory and hang time of kickoffs and punts being under what was expected. Daniels further added that the kicking balls were "unusually soft to the touch."
Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker and Patriots kicker Chad Ryland both proceeded to miss field goals in the first half. That was said to have been because the balls were discovered to weigh 11 PSI instead of the legal limit of 13.5. They were inflated at half and it was a noticeable difference, with the balls traveling father in the final two quarters.
“Again, things that are out of our control, I don’t know. I don’t know what the explanation is,” Belichick said. “It was the same for both teams, so whatever that means, but yeah. I mean, Butker had a perfect season going.”
According to the Boston Herald's Doug Kyed, the league declined to comment on the matter.
