The Hamilton Spectator

Did you hear that? No, of course, you didn’t

NFL’s damning silence on a new case of underinfla­ted footballs

- SALLY JENKINS

Just listen to those crickets. A conspicuou­s hush is emanating from the NFL office on the subject of those soft footballs the New York Giants retrieved from the field against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Dec. 4.

Where was the outrage, the treating of ball-inflation and pounds-per-square-inch as more serious than a hijacking? Compare the screams of scandal NFL executives emitted towards Tom Brady and the New England Patriots to this smothered, pillow-overthe-face reaction.

It’s a guilty silence, and it leaves NFL commission­er Roger Goodell beached and exposed. Goodell has always struggled with the demands of speech, but his wordlessne­ss in this instance has nothing to do with competence but rather dishonesty.

Any serious examinatio­n of those footballs from the Giants-Steelers game might well show that Goodell owes the Patriots and Brady an apology and material recompense. Which is exactly why the league is shutting the matter down and shutting it down now.

When the Giants tested air pressure on two footballs they captured against the Steelers and reported them to be below the permissibl­e range of 12.5 PSI, league officials should have leaped into action. They should have told Steelers officials, “You’re in big trouble” and then leaked erroneous amateur-hour data that poisoned the public understand­ing. They should have triggered a massive multimilli­on-dollar investigat­ion, complete with footnoted junk science, that tarred a future Hall of Famer and resulted in fines, a forfeited draft pick and a four-game suspension. They should have invoked the words “scheme” and “tamper” and “cheating” and “competitiv­e integrity,” even compared the offence to “performanc­e-enhancing drugs.” Instead? Nothing. NFL execs were neither overwhelme­d nor underwhelm­ed by the report. They weren’t whelmed at all. Instead there was this throbbing stillness. Followed by an attempt at denial and misdirecti­on. After Jay Glazer of Fox Sports broke the news that the Giants had gone to the league with measuremen­ts showing loss of air pressure, the NFL replied with a stiff-necked yet ducking statement: “The officiatin­g game ball procedures were followed and there were no chain of command issues. All footballs were in compliance and no formal complaint was filed by the Giants with our office.”

Ahhhhh. No “formal” complaint. As opposed to that by-the-book complaint lodged against the Patriots during the 2015 AFC championsh­ip game, when Indianapol­is Colts general manager Ryan Grigson stuck his head into the NFL suite and bawled, “We’re playing with a small ball.” Which set off the most infamously ludicrous investigat­ion in league history.

The league would have you think there is nothing to see here, that they never received PSI data from the Giants that might be exculpator­y for the Patriots. Move along, folks. But Giants coach Ben McAdoo blew the cover story when he admitted Sunday night that the Giants had, in fact, tested two balls and found them soft. “I don’t know, the PSIs were a little low, so they checked them, and they just let me know they checked them,” he said.

Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio came along with a sourced report that one ball had measured 11.4 and another 11.8. Glazer reaffirmed that the Giants indeed “alerted” the league about the balls.

Now, there are two things to take from this. The first is obvious. You don’t need a legion of scientists and lawyers to know what anyone with a car knows: Cold weather causes air pressure to drop in footballs, the same as it does in your tires. The only people who don’t know that are hermetical­ly sealed in Park Avenue offices and only travel by soft shoe and NFL limo.

If Steelers footballs were underinfla­ted, the most likely explanatio­n is not that someone deflated them by hand but that the game was played in temperatur­es in the low 40s (Fahrenheit), with a wind chill of 28. Just as natural deflation is the most likely explanatio­n for what happened in the AFC title game, when the Patriots’ balls measured an average of 11.3 in wet, even colder weather.

The second point is less obvious: Somebody from the New York Giants stuck a needle into two footballs during a game last week to measure them. Which tells you that the NFL’s ball-security procedures are not being followed, even now.

But the NFL doesn’t want to get into that. If it admits it received info from the Giants about low PSI, then it has to admit that maybe weather affected the inflation of footballs in other games, too.

It has to admit that league officials lacked command of seventh-grade science and that Goodell raced to judgment. It has to admit that a few whiffs of PSI aren’t a game-altering factor, much less worth serious penalties. It has to admit that Goodell is not willing to pursue Art Rooney and Ben Roethlisbe­rger over the air in a couple of footballs with the same energy.

It has to admit that Deflategat­e was not a fair process but just an excuse to punish the Patriots in order to satisfy owner envy and internal politics. It has to admit that it has been covering up PSI data in order to save the last rags of Goodell’s shredded reputation. It has to admit that the NFL under this commission­er has zero credibilit­y left.

 ?? DON WRIGHT, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? Pittsburgh Steelers’ Antonio Brown holds a football high after scoring a touchdown against the New York Giants on Dec. 4.
DON WRIGHT, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Pittsburgh Steelers’ Antonio Brown holds a football high after scoring a touchdown against the New York Giants on Dec. 4.

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