New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, citing an error made by league officials, confirmed that the footballs used for kicking in the first half of Sunday’s Week 15 game against the Kansas City Chiefs were underinflated by about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds.
‘I think you could see that by the kicks,’ Belichick said Friday during a news conference. ‘Both kickers missed kicks. (Chiefs kicker Harrison) Butker hadn’t missed a kick all year. Kickoffs, we had two of them that almost went out of bounds.
‘They had six balls. It was both sets of balls. It was all six of them. So, I don’t know. You have to talk to the league about what happened on that because we don’t have anything to do with that part of it. They control all that.’
Belichick’s comments confirmed a Thursday report from MassLive.com that broke the news on the matter.
Per league rules, game balls are required to fall within a range of 12.5 pounds per square inch to 13.5 psi, and game officials and league security personnel oversee the entire operation.
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According to MassLive.com, however, Patriots staffers complained to the officiating crew and said the balls supplied to the kicking units appeared to be off.
Veteran referee Shawn Hochuli’s crew worked the game. Belichick confirmed that officials took the balls into the locker room, where they were inflated to fall within the required range. Per MassLive.com, the balls were measuring 11 psi when they were checked at halftime.
‘They fixed them at halftime, but didn’t do it before then, which is another question you could ask,’ Belichick continued. ‘But, we don’t have anything to do with it. Were we aware of it? Definitely. But, as I understand it, they were all the same (for both teams).’
Indeed, kicking was a struggle in the first half for both teams. Butker came into Sunday a perfect 23-for-23 on field goal attempts, but missed a 39-yard attempt midway through the first quarter. In the second half, he converted field goals of 29 and 54 yards.
Despite that, Butker on Thursday didn’t attribute the miss to the underinflated balls and said officials alerted him coming out of halftime that the kicking balls had been below the required range.
‘I think it was technique, one of those misfires that you wish you had back,’ he said. ‘My second kick of pregame warmup, I had a 38-yarder middle, and it kind of sliced off to the right like that. So it showed up, kind of, in warmup. I made a lot of big kicks with flatter balls, and shoot, even in college, I kicked a lot of flat balls.’
The possession after Butker missed his field goal, Patriots place kicker Chad Ryland missed a 41-yard try. Later in the half, with 4:50 left in the second quarter, Ryland converted a 25-yard field goal.
The Patriots lost the game 27-17.
Of course, a story about the inflation of footballs and the New England Patriots requires mention of the drawn-out Deflategate scandal from 2014 in which the NFL alleged that then-quarterback Tom Brady and the Patriots orchestrated a scheme to intentionally deflate game balls used in the AFC Championship Game against the Colts to extract a perceived competitive advantage. Brady has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, but New England was fined $1 million and forfeited a pair of draft picks, and Brady served a four-game suspension.
‘Again, the things that are out of our control, I don’t know what the explanation is,’ Belichick said Friday of the Chiefs game. ‘But, it was the same for both teams. So, whatever that means. I mean, Butker had a perfect season going.’
