The New England Patriots are currently under investigation by the NFL for their alleged use of deflated footballs during the AFC Championship Game on Sunday. As is tradition when Bill Belichick and his team are accused of cheating, the haters come out, rivals stamp their feet and scream, and everyone rightly or wrongly makes a big fuss about the issue.
However, Mike Schofield, a football writer for SoShCentral.com, recently pointed out an interesting wrinkle to the #DeflateGate controversy: Aaron Rodgers has done basically the same thing before with absolutely no repercussions.
Schofield dug up a recording of the November regular season match-up between the Patriots and the Green Bay Packers, then highlighted a noteworthy snippet in the third quarter of the game when CBS analyst Phil Simms revealed that Packers QB Aaron Rodgers regularly overinflates the football. Simms said that he learned about this tendency from Rodgers himself.
"He said something was unique: 'I like to push the limit to how much air we can put in the football, even go over what they allow you to do, and see if the officials take air out of it,'" Simms recounted. "Because it's easier to grip, he likes them tight."
Simms and Nantz went on to gush about Rodgers' "big hands" and "strong grip", completely ignoring the fact that what Rodgers does is, technically, cheating.
The closing quote at the end was the cherry on top: "You know, the officials do check those footballs," said Simms, "and sometimes may even get lucky and put an extra half a pound of air in there to help Aaron Rodgers out."
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So, to conclude, we can all stop talking about the Patriots now.
[via Deadspin]
