By Jonathan Clegg
The National Football League said Wednesday that it is
continuing to investigate whether the New England Patriots used
underinflated footballs in the AFC Championship Game amid reports
that the league found 11 balls used in Sunday's game weren't
properly inflated.
Troy Vincent, the NFL's executive vice president for football
operations, said that the "investigation is currently under way and
we're still awaiting findings," according to the Associated Press.
The NFL didn't respond to a Wall Street Journal request for
comment.
ESPN reported late Tuesday that anonymous NFL sources said 11 of
the 12 game balls allotted to the Patriots were underinflated by 2
pounds per square inch of air. The report didn't say how that may
have occurred.
According to NFL guidelines, game balls must be inflated to 12
1/2 to 13 1/2 pounds. The benefit of underinflating a ball is to
provide a better grip.
The Patriots, who beat the Indianapolis Colts 45-7 in Sunday's
game, didn't comment on the report other than to say they were
cooperating with the NFL's investigation.
New England will face the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX on
Feb. 1 in Glendale, Ariz. The Seahawks said on Tuesday that they
wouldn't comment on the matter.
It is unclear how the league was alerted to the possibility that
underinflated balls had been used in Sunday's game, though multiple
media reports Monday said that the Colts grew suspicious after
linebacker D'Qwell Jackson intercepted New England quarterback Tom
Brady in the second quarter.
On the first play from scrimmage in the third quarter, the
officials briefly held up the game and switched out the ball for a
replacement.
Mike Carey, a former NFL official covering the game as an
analyst for CBS, said during the game's broadcast it looked like
the officials "spotted the ball for a kicking ball." Kicking balls,
also known as K-balls, are kept separately from regular game balls
and controlled by officials to prevent tampering.
Under NFL rules, each team must provide the officials with 12
footballs for use during the game. These are inspected by the
referee and then returned to the teams once they have passed
inspection.
Though the league has specific guidelines over the weight and
pressure of footballs used in games, some altering of the balls is
legal. Quarterbacks often like game balls to be scuffed or rubbed
with dirt to make them less slippery and easier to grip.
But teams have long tried to push those laws to the limit. In an
interview with the Tampa Bay Times in 2012, former Tampa Bay
Buccaneers quarterback Brad Johnson said that before Super Bowl
XXXVII in 2003, he paid some unidentified people $7,500 to doctor
the 100 footballs allocated for use in that game. Johnson didn't
say that he had the air pressure altered; he said that he had the
balls scuffed, which wasn't legal at the time but is now. Tampa Bay
beat the Oakland Raiders 48-21 in the Super Bowl. The Buccaneers
didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
During a CBS broadcast of this season's matchup between the
Green Bay Packers and New England on Nov. 30, announcer Phil Simms
said Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers preferred footballs that
were inflated slightly beyond the specified limit.
"He said something which was unique: 'I like to push the limit
to how much air we can put in the football, even go over what they
allow you to do, and see if the officials take the air out of it,'
" Simms said. "Because he thinks it's easy for him to grip."
Rodgers said on a radio interview Tuesday that overinflating a
football didn't constitute cheating. "It's not an advantage when
you have a football that's inflated more than average air
pressure," he said. "We're not kicking these footballs."
Inside the NFL, the investigation is a source of eye rolls from
coaches and executives who say the Patriots' advantage would be
minimal. "I think it was 41-7, right?" said Minnesota Vikings coach
Mike Zimmer. "So I don't think the balls had much to do with
it."
Kevin Clark
contributed to this article.
Write to Jonathan Clegg at jonathan.clegg@wsj.com
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