Belichick on Underinflated Footballs Sunday: “We Were Aware of It”
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Patriots head coach Bill Belichick met with the media on Friday morning and addressed a variety of topics, including the situation with the NFL after the footballs weren’t properly checked ahead of Sunday’s match-up against Kansas City.
Reports over the last couple of days revealed that the footballs were inflated at just 11 PSI, which is over 2 PSI lower than the league-required 13.5 PSI. It ended up playing a factor on Sunday during New England’s disappointing 27-17 loss to the Chiefs at Gillette Stadium.
Belichick told reporters Friday that they became aware of the problem in the first quarter, which as he explained caused issues for both kickers.
“We were aware of it in the first quarter,” said Belichick. “The officials handled that, and they were underinflated by 2, 2 1/2 pounds. I think you could see that by the kicks. Both kickers missed kicks. [Harrison] Butker hadn’t missed a kick all year. Kickoffs…we had two that almost went out of bounds. There were six balls, it was both sets of balls, it was all six of them.”
“I don’t know, you’ll have to talk to the league about what happened on that because we don’t have anything to do with that part of it. They control all that, then they fixed them at halftime but didn’t do it before then, which is another question you could ask. But we don’t have anything to do with it.”
“Were we aware of it? Yeah, definitely. But they were all, as I understand it, they were all the same.”
As Belichick noted, Butker came into Sunday’s game a perfect 23-of-23 before his 39-yard attempt in the first quarter sailed wide to the right. Chad Ryland followed that up for New England with a 41-yard miss of his own on the ensuing drive that went wide left.
At some point, the officials were alerted to the issue and the balls were fixed at halftime. However, Ryland hit his next field goal with 4:50 remaining in the half from 25-yards out, while Butker hit both of his third-quarter attempts, including one from 54-yards out.
Considering the previous DeflateGate fiasco that occurred 10 years ago, Belichick was asked if he was surprised by what transpired on Sunday. He dismissed it, although it was obvious that he was definitely annoyed by it.
“Again, the things that are out of our control, I don’t know what the explanation is,” said Belichick. “But, it was the same for both teams, whatever that means. Yeah, I mean, Butker had a perfect season going.”
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