The crazy situation known as Deflategate took another interesting turn Thursday when ESPN’s Chris Mortensen went on an Arizona sports radio station and said New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and president Jonathan Kraft apologized to him.
Jonathan Kraft went on 98.5 The Sports Hub before the Patriots’ preseason game against the Carolina Panthers on Friday night, and he denied that an apology was made to the ESPN reporter.
“Look, I think that throughout the whole situation that transpired, a lot of respected reporters have received information that was false and really could’ve only been leaked by the league,” Kraft said, as transcribed by The Boston Globe’s Ben Volin.
“And in the ordinary course, we’ve talked to some of those reporters and we’ve let them know that we don’t blame them for their misinformation. We blame the league for using them. We still never gotten an explanation from the league why the erroneous reports weren’t corrected, and I think the sources for the misinformation are the only ones who should be apologizing to the reporters. We haven’t and we really have no need to.”
Mortensen’s report in January that 11 of the 12 footballs the Patriots used in last season’s AFC Championship Game against the Indianapolis Colts were underinflated by two pounds per square inch each played a huge role in driving this controversy to insane levels. This information later was discovered to be false, leading Mortensen to delete his original tweet from January.
Based on what Kraft said he told reporters about the misinformation, it’s hard to understand how Mortensen would interpret that as an apology.
It’s nothing like an apology at all, and Mortensen doesn’t deserve one. If anything, he owes the Patriots an apology.
Thumbnail photo via Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports Images
