Brennan: Deflategate talk mostly hot air
In hindsight, perhaps the Indianapolis Colts should be happy that the New England Patriots didn't play an entire game with legal, perfectly inflated footballs.
When the Patriots were allegedly cheating by using deflated footballs, they could manage only a 17-7 halftime lead over the Colts. In the second half, apparently using legal, regulation footballs, the Patriots poured it on, 28-0.
If the Patriots were trying to cheat, they didn't hurt the Colts, they hurt themselves.
That's just another bizarre fact to toss into this strange national conversation we're having over Deflategate.
We've all learned a lot about footballs over the past couple of days. We now know NFL quarterbacks like their footballs all kinds of ways: Shined up. Oiled up. Scuffed up. Heated up. Deflated. Overinflated.
The rules say a football for an NFL game must be inflated within 12½ and 13½ pounds per square inch (PSI), but it appears that might not be the most-followed rule in the game. In the coming days and weeks, we're likely to find out, and if Patriots coach Bill Belichick is the only coach to ever doctor a football or two or 12, he's going to get in trouble. Again.
And even if everyone is doing it, which remains to be seen, it's likely NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is going to make an example of Belichick, rules being the rules — or as a kind of lifetime achievement award.
Early indications are that many players and former players don't take the rule too seriously. One of them, former Washington quarterback Joe Theismann, went so far as to do a test with one legal football and one deflated football on Wednesday.
"I wanted to physically handle the footballs and see if I could tell a difference in them," Theismann told Paste BN Sports' Jim Corbett. "And I couldn't."
Theismann went on to quote Dan Marino: "The last thing you're thinking about as a quarterback when you get to the line of scrimmage is, 'I wonder if this football is 2 PSI lighter?' "
They came out of the woodwork, these legendary quarterbacks, furrowing their brows and wondering what all the fuss was about after all the news media reports about the underflated footballs.
"I've never heard of this before," Super Bowl XXII MVP Doug Williams said in a phone conversation Wednesday, "but it could have happened to me, I don't know. When it's cold, the football is going to be harder to catch no matter what the pressure is. But I don't know that I ever would have noticed it, if it was one pound or two pounds more or less."
Williams' Super Bowl teammate, Hall of Fame cornerback Darrell Green, was equally unconcerned.
"We're talking about a millimeter, which is very insignificant in the scheme of things," he said over the phone. "To use the term deflated is an over-exaggeration. It's not truly deflated. The only reason this is a story is because it's about this coach who is known for these kinds of things in the past. Otherwise, it would be a non-story."
He's right, of course, but nothing is a non-story in the NFL anymore, at least not in this season of all NFL seasons, one that has challenged the league's integrity as never before.
Deflategate is not Ray Rice — not even close, thankfully — but the common denominator in both stories is that once again, the league's credibility is being questioned, and very publicly so.
Which is why, as we roll our eyes, or laugh out loud, or shake our heads over the notion of 11 deflated footballs at the Patriots' disposal in the first half of their 45-7 romp over the Colts, we also know that Goodell will not ignore this controversy.
He cannot ignore this controversy.
Because the league is so big, everything about it is big — even when it might be the littlest thing.
Follow columnist Christine Brennan on Twitter @cbrennansports.
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