Patriots fans who are still salty about #DeflateGate aren’t alone. The man who owns the team remains miffed, too.
“Sometimes, the league really messes up, and I think they really messed this up badly,” Robert Kraft told the New York Times as part of a broader profile. “But we’ve all agreed to subjugate our right to disrupt everything . . . I mean, we can, but we’re a partnership. There’s jealousy, there’s envy, there’s stupidity. Sometimes, life is unfair, and you have to suck it up and move on and not use it as an excuse.”
That quote from Kraft reflects plenty of truths about the debacle arising from a dynamic the league had never previously considered before an in-game complaint from the Colts two years and one day ago prompted a dusty-garage laboratory experiment with miscalibrated equipment, flawed assumptions, and ultimately an agenda to work backward and find that cheating happened even if it didn’t. All of it seemed to be fueled by lingering resentment that has set a standard that plenty of other teams can’t compete with, so they claim that the success came from something other than hard work, careful planning, and superior execution.
This year, with the Patriots generating an overall record of 16-2 despite not having Tom Brady for four games, no one can claim that anything happening other than hard work, careful planning, and superior execution. With two wins, it could culminate in Kraft, Bill Belichick, and/or Tom Brady telling Commissioner Roger Goodell to stick this in his trophy case.