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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 It ended up playing a factor on Sunday during New England’s disappointing 27-17 loss to the Chiefs at Gillette Stadium.<\/p>\n
Belichick told reporters Friday that they became aware of the problem in the first quarter, which as he explained caused issues for both kickers.<\/p>\n
“We were aware of it in the first quarter,” said Belichick.\u00a0 “The officials handled that, and they were underinflated by 2, 2 1\/2 pounds.\u00a0 I think you could see that by the kicks.\u00a0 Both kickers missed kicks.\u00a0 [Harrison] Butker hadn’t missed a kick all year.\u00a0 Kickoffs…we had two that almost went out of bounds.\u00a0 There were six balls, it was both sets of balls, it was all six of them.”<\/p>\n
“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.\u00a0 They control all that, then they fixed them at halftime but didn’t do it before then, which is another question you could ask.\u00a0 But we don’t have anything to do with it.”<\/p>\n
“Were we aware of it?\u00a0 Yeah, definitely.\u00a0 But they were all, as I understand it, they were all the same.”<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Chad Ryland followed that up for New England with a 41-yard miss of his own on the ensuing drive that went wide left.<\/p>\n
At some point, the officials were alerted to the issue and the balls were fixed at halftime.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Considering the previous DeflateGate fiasco that occurred 10 years ago, Belichick was asked if he was surprised by what transpired on Sunday.\u00a0 He dismissed it, although it was obvious that he was definitely annoyed by it.<\/p>\n
“Again, the things that are out of our control, I don’t know what the explanation is,” said Belichick.\u00a0 “But, it was the same for both teams, whatever that means.\u00a0 \u00a0Yeah, I mean, Butker had a perfect season going.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[34,23274,23391],"class_list":["post-50251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-patriots-news","tag-bill-belichick","tag-chad-ryland","tag-harrison-butker"],"yoast_head":"\n