Tom Brady just gained some valuable material for his court case against the NFL.
After the NFL makes rules changes and pinpoints specific points of emphasis for officiating crews in the offseason, a group of officials make the rounds to NFL training camps to advise players, coaches and staff of the changes and new information.
Gary Slaughter, the Central Region supervisor of officials, met with the media Friday in one of those visits at Pittsburgh Steelers camp to discuss the new protocol the league has implemented for checking footballs and recording air pressure measurements in the wake of the Deflategate saga. In the process, he readily admitted something NFL commissioner Roger Goodell probably wishes he hadn’t: There have been issues with football inflation in the past.
“These are man-made products,” Slaughter said, via the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “There is a bladder and a valve. We have all checked them for many years. Sometimes when you check the ball in the locker room right out of the box, there could be a problem. They could have a slow leak, and you wouldn’t even know it at the time.”
That the official footballs are known to have air containment issues that cause deflation of the balls and easily go undetected even to the most trained referees is incredibly valuable information to Brady’s defense. It’s more than reasonable to envision a scenario where the NFL Players Association calls Slaughter to testify and enters him as an expert specifically to repeat that very line.
It also stands to reason that there could be a scenario in which the footballs checked before the AFC Championship Game had the very defective issue Slaughter described, and in the time period from when they were checked prior to kickoff to when they were checked again at halftime, they deflated enough to cause alarm.
Coupled with the Ideal Gas Law explanation the New England Patriots have clung to (which makes more than enough sense on its own), there could be an answer here. Plus, that would explain why the Indianapolis Colts’ football had not deflated as much as New England’s when checked at halftime.
Thumbnail photo via Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports Images
H/t to CSNNE
