The New England Patriots obviously have a history with underinflated footballs. But this time around, not only was it out of their control, but it actually worked to their detriment.
During last week’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs, the kicking balls were underinflated in the game for both teams in the first half, resulting in some issues in the kicking game on kickoffs, extra points, and field goal attempts. Patriots head coach Bill Belichick addressed the situation during his press conference this week.
“Well, the officials handle that, and they were underinflated by 2-2.5 pounds,” Belichick said according to Pro Football Talk. “I think you could see that by the kicks. Both kickers missed kicks. [Chiefs kicker Harrison] Butker hadn’t missed a kick all year. Kickoffs, we had two of them that almost went out of bounds. So, they had six balls. It was both sets of balls. It was all six of them. So, 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. 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? Definitely. But, as I understand it, they were all the same.”
Obviously, there was nothing nefarious going on this time around and the deflated kicking balls affected both teams equally, but it is someone humorous that the Patriots had to deal with deflated balls after the infamous deflate-gate scandal several years ago.
