NY Times: Kraft Has Payback In Sight (Kinda?)

[Bill Lee]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/sports/football/patriots-robert-kraft-nfl-roger-goodell.html has a pretty wide-ranging article on Kraft complete with quotes that came from an over a half-hour long sit down with Kraft. It quotes a few different players (Willie, CuMart) and gets into his recent politics / statesman type roles.

I think the title they use is a bit over the top since they don't quote Kraft as seeking revenge, they just point out the obvious fact that winning this year's Super Bowl would indeed be sweet revenge. Indeed they say they tried to draw Kraft out on that angle and came up short. They also say "The 30 minutes allotted for the interview went on way longer, though some of it was given to asides and stem-winding tangents.".

The juiciest quote I found was more of the same stuff we've heard for quite a while now.

Kraft largely kept quiet while the Brady case played out. But in a recent interview, he made clear that he remains annoyed by how his best player and team were pilloried.

“Sometimes, the league really messes up, and I think they really messed this up badly,” he said in a wide-ranging discussion in his Gillette Stadium office here. “But we’ve all agreed to subjugate our right to disrupt everything” — the Patriots declined to fight the league over financial penalties it levied on the team — “I mean, we can, but we’re a partnership. There’s jealousy, there’s envy, there’s stupidity. Sometimes, life is unfair, and you have to suck it up and move on and not use it as an excuse.”

Annoyed is a lot different than vengeful, IMHO. "The league really messed this up badly" is as weak as milk toast. In any case, it's still interesting that NYT would devote this much attention to Kraft.