Tom Brady's second-quarter interception to the Indianapolis Colts didn't affect the outcome of the game, but it might end up being very costly after all.
When Colts linebacker D'Qwell Jackson picked off Brady deep in Colts territory during Sunday's AFC championship game, that's when deflate-gate started.
According to New York Newsday and WCVB in Boston, Jackson believed the ball wasn't inflated as much as usual. He told a Colts equipment manager the ball felt under-inflated and gave it to him. The equipment man told Colts coach Chuck Pagano on the sideline. That message was relayed to Colts general manager Ryan Grigson in the press box, who told NFL director of football operations Mike Kensil, Newsday and WCVB said. Kensil told the on-field officials at halftime about the balls. Someone told Bob Kravitz of WTHR in Indianapolis, because he broke the story of the Patriots possibly deflating their game footballs – which would help them throw and catch it better in the rain –and now the NFL is looking into it.
And that's the recipe for the first crazy story leading up to the Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks.
“Did not notice, and that’s something for the league to handle," Pagano said, according to Newsday. "It’s not my place to comment on it.”
The game had an odd delay right after the second-half kickoff. The officials threw a ball that had been spotted back to the sideline and replaced it with another ball. CBS' Mike Carey, a former official, speculated during the broadcast that the officials had mistakenly spotted the ball used for kickoffs only, but based on the timeline we now have of how deflate-gate came to light, there was likely more to it than that.
The Patriots have mostly shrugged it off. Coach Bill Belichick said the team will cooperate with the NFL. Tom Brady called it all ridiculous. And tight end Rob Gronkowski, as only Gronk can, hilariously said he was to blame:
source: Yahoo Sports
Whoops lol pic.twitter.com/uLxN7A5cpq
— Rob Gronkowski (@RobGronkowski) January 20, 2015
New England could end up being fined, and Kravitz said a source told him the league might even strip the Patriots of draft picks if it's found they deflated footballs after the officials inspected them before the game. Brady's lone interception against the Colts might end up being a lot worse for the Patriots than we could have imagined at the time.
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