I hate to disappoint the conspiracy theorists out there, but I am not a PR hack for the NFL. I have been a Pats fan for the 40+ years I have lived in the area. And as I said in the lead in, this was re-post from February, as I wrote it shortly after the Super Bowl.
The purpose of the post was to highlight Brady & Belichick's handling of Deflategate throughout the year and at the end. . Re: Brady, as much as one side of me wanted him to put Roger down when he accepted the MVP trophy for the Super Bowl (which would have been the perfect time to do it, right? I mean you couldn’t have written a better scenario), but I was more impressed with his decision to let the matter go, and move on. In all of his years in Boston, this was the clearest example of just how classy this guy is. Re: Belichick, what can you say? He was typical Belichick at the end, commenting that "yesterday'" was nice, but reminding everyone that we were five weeks behind most of the other teams in the league in preparing for 2017.
Throughout the year, and at the end, both of them treated Deflategate as a blip, and they didn’t need to waste another breath obsessing over it. And they succeeded as a result. With that observation, I felt I could move on and let it go, too.
But about 5% of the post dealt with not holding a grudge against Goodell. And that clearly invoked some really strong reactions. While I stand by the comment, I am more disappointed that it detracted from the larger message , but the fault was mine. Either the writing was off base or I failed to really know the audience. Either way, it was my bad. But either way, I don’t need to hold any grudges. It won't do me any good