Deflategate essentially is a thing of the past when it comes to challenging Tom Brady’s four-game suspension, but that doesn’t mean the New England Patriots are going away quietly.
Patriots president Jonathan Kraft took some time to talk with 98.5 The Sports Hub on Thursday before New England’s 34-22 preseason win over the New Orleans Saints, and Deflategate (of course) was one of the topics he hit on with Marc Bertrand.
“I think I want to start by saying Tom Brady is exceptional,” Kraft said, via Boston.CBSLocal.com. “We’ve talked about it a lot, but he’s an exceptional human being. From our perspective, he’s the type of professional athlete that you want to celebrate, hold up as an example, not only to other players in the league but hold up to kids that are playing the game, and just as somebody you want to model your life off of, not only as a professional athlete but how he is as a father to his children, a husband, a son to his parents, a brother to his sisters. He is as good of a human being as you can get. And I think as I’ve told you before, if Tom was a lot younger and let’s say he wasn’t a football player but was the exact same guy and he married my daughter, I’d think my daughter had married the greatest guy in the world. He’s exceptional.
“So for us, seeing him treated him in a way that we don’t perceive to be fair eats at us greatly. And there’s still a tremendous amount of, there’s frustration around how the pure facts of science and lack of any type of tangible, hard evidence that certain people can look at those circumstances and then try to taint him or his legacy without that type of evidence. And that will always be a frustration that spurs anger here. Not having him play on the field, there will be an emptiness and you really feel for Tom, because you know how badly he wants to be out there.”
Deflategate frustration in New England isn’t going away anytime soon.
Thumbnail photo via David Butler II/USA TODAY Sports Images
