NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Tuesday that, contrary to what everyone believed, the NFL’s random PSI checks during the 2015 season were only meant as a deterrent and weren’t part of a “research study.”
Without releasing any numbers, Goodell also said no teams were found to have violated any rules during these “spot checks.”
And ESPN’s Adam Schefter thinks the league isn’t doing anything to help its image.
“I’ll say this, if the numbers came out and supported the league’s contention, I’m just guessing here, we probably would have heard more about that … but that didn’t happen,” Schefter said on WEEI’s “Dennis & Callahan” on Wednesday. “The league has been, I think, inconsistent. In this particular case, the league made up the rules as they went along.”
Schefter also noted that the NFL seems to have lightened up on football pressure since the New England Patriots’ Deflategate fiasco last season.
“The league made a huge deal out of the Patriots’ footballs, but then this year I think it probably got a little bit more educated on the topic, more educated than it was at that particular time,” Schefter said. “I think that reflected that it was more along the lines of what people in New England thought and not along the lines of what people across the rest of the league might have thought.”
But, Patriots fans, if you thought the NFL was going to admit anything since learning more about air pressure, then you’re probably out of luck. Schefter doesn’t see the NFL doing that, and he especially doesn’t see them giving back the Patriots’ first- and fourth-round draft picks.
“If they uphold the decision from Judge Berman (in the appeal), then New England is going to be angry, and have a right to be angry,” Schefter said. “But the fact of the matter is, that’s not going to change. The league will never give in on that point.
“The league docked the Patriots a penalty based on the evidence that it believed it had, and it’s never going to go back on that, as much as the people there don’t like it. I would be shocked if the league ever went back and returned that compensation. That would be such an admission on the league’s part that it botched the case.”
Thumbnail photo via Brian Spurlock/USA TODAY Sports Images
