Small Balls

The last thing I did before I went to bed was to set up the DVR to record the 3:00am replay of the game on NFL network.

The first thing I heard this morning, listening to WEEI on my way to work was the “Deflate-Gate” story.

Having small balls would certainly be one explanation for the brutal 45-7 beating the Colts suffered in Gillette last night. Someone’s testosterone levels should be tested after a game like that.

The small balls story was broken by an Indianapolis-based reporter, Bob Kravitz, who provided the obligatory “Nobody is suggesting this is why the Colts lost” codicil to his “sources say” accusation that the Patriots and Bill Belichick were once again doing something shady.

And I’m not saying this story had anything to do with that last touchdown – set up by a 4^th and 4 conversion with New England already holding an insurmountable 38-7 lead – and the bitter knowledge the Patriots were toying with the Colts like a genetically-modified super-intelligent cat with a three-legged mouse.

The Pats are easy marks for this kind of thing (and have nobody to blame but themselves) but it all seems just a bit much, even by the Machiavellian standard to which the pigskin pundits and bobbleheads hold Bill Belichick. Before this story broke, as we watched the post-game pressers, I noted for friends and family assembled for the game that just once I wanted to see Belichick come out to the podium dressed in a red suit and cape and carrying a pitchfork – something like Jason Sudeikis on SNL.

“Rubbing down the football with freshly slaughtered goat’s blood is perfectly legal. Trust me. I wrote the NFL Rule Book.”

“Yes, it is Latin but I’m not sure I’d call what Tom was signaling an ‘incantation.’ He was doing what he always does, putting us in the best play for the situation.”

“We’re on to Gomorrah.”

Brady has already dismissed the story as “ridiculous” (or was that “ridiculum?”) but as I write this, Belichick has yet to go on record with his non-answer answer. You know, something like, “You’ll have to talk to the league about that.” If we’re really lucky he’ll drone on about league mandated procedures and protocols and how they follow those every week and how this week was no different from any other week in terms of those procedures and protocols and how the Patriots’ balls were handled. (I think it’s fair to say that if anyone has rules for how his balls are handled it would be Bill Belichick.) Then he could smirk his smarter-than-you smirk and level his lifeless, black doll’s eyes on the reporter who asked how soft his balls were and after an almost imperceptible gesture by Belichick, the reporter would fall to his knees and begin vomiting frogs.

Like any Patriots’ fan I know how this ends. The League will investigate but nobody trusts Goodell at this point so when it’s found the Patriots did nothing wrong it will have all the credibility of the Mueller Report. Underinflated footballs will become just another thread in the larger “Cheatriots” narrative…

The Patriots have been under-inflating footballs for years! This time they almost got caught! How else do you explain Tom Brady’s record in cold weather games?