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The New England Patriots dynastic run did not come without its fair share of controversy. Arguably the biggest scandal of them all was “Deflategate,” which ruled that legendary quarterback Tom Brady was guilty of deflating footballs in the Pats 2014 AFC Championship Game victory over the Indianapolis Colts. A decade after the infamous game, former star safety Devin McCourty weighed in on the saga.
Brady was found to have been “at least generally aware” that air was taken out of the footballs that were used in New England’s blowout 45-7 victory over the Colts, which eventually resulted in the league handing him a four-game suspension that went into effect at the start of the 2016 campaign. McCourty appears to have acknowledged that Brady tampered with the footballs, but he believes that it’s something pretty much every quarterback in the NFL was doing at the time.
“I think across the board, every quarterback, especially the good ones, they all violated whatever rule to the football rulebook,” McCourty said on the upcoming episode of “Brady vs. Belichick: The Verdict,” a series airing on Vice TV. “What’s interesting to me was after that year, we never heard anyone talk about the footballs. You expected, alright, the Patriots’ Tom Brady got caught deflating the footballs, this is gonna be this new rule. We never heard of anything ever again. Honestly, I think if you put any quarterback on the stand and say, ‘Hey, you have to tell the truth,’ they would say, ‘Yeah, I deflated mine a little bit,’ (or), ‘I added air to mine.'”
The Patriots always felt like they got the short end of the stick with “Deflategate,” and it’s not too hard to see why. As McCourty notes, several quarterbacks have come out and said Brady wasn’t the only one doing this, while also stating their own preference when it comes to the air pressure of a football. This issue also arose in a game in which New England demolished their opponent, so would the air pressure of the footballs really have made much of a difference?
Beyond that, this air pressure issue pretty much disappeared after “Deflategate” came to an end, making McCourty feel like the Pats were singled out and made an example of with this ruling. Regardless, it didn’t stop them from proceeding to win Super Bowl 49 a couple weeks later, before winning another pair of Super Bowls a couple years later to bookend their dynasty.
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