Belichick: Pats 'followed every rule'
— -- Bill Belichick stated that the New England Patriots "followed every rule" in preparing their footballs for last Sunday's AFC Championship Game, offering several potential reasons behind the "Deflategate" controversy.
The Patriots coach addressed the issue during an unscheduled availability Saturday afternoon, one day after the NFL announced that it has not drawn any conclusions yet on how the team used underinflated footballs during the first half of their win against the Indianapolis Colts at rain-soaked Gillette Stadium.
"I believe now 100 percent that I have personally and we as an organization have absolutely followed every rule to the letter," Belichick said, while acknowledging that he felt compelled to speak up and address the questions raised by the controversy in the past week.
After detailing the organization's preparation process and suggesting that weather conditions may have affected the air pressure in the footballs, the longtime Patriots coach emotionally defended his team, saying, "We did everything as right as we can do it."
"At no time was there any intent whatsoever to try to compromise the integrity of the game or to gain an advantage," he said.
Belichick also said he has learned more about the science of air pressure in the past week than he had from a lifetime around the game. He could not provide specific answers as to why 11 of the Patriots' initial 12 game balls in the AFC title game were underinflated, but he explained how other things such as temperature could have an effect. While describing how the Patriots "simulated a game-day situation in terms of the preparation of the footballs," he remained adamant that the team had done everything correctly in the process of preparing its game balls.
"When the footballs are delivered to the officials' locker room, the officials were asked to inflate them to 12.5 PSI," he said. "What exactly they did, I don't know. But, for the purposes of our study, that's what we did. We set them at 12.5 [PSI]. That's at the discretion of the official regardless of what we ask for, it's the official's discretion to put them where he wants. Again, that's done in a controlled climate.
"The footballs are prepared in our locker room. They are delivered to the officials' locker room, which is a controlled environment. ... When the footballs go out onto the field into game conditions, whatever those conditions are whether it's hot and humid, cold and damp, cold and dry, whatever it is, that's where the footballs are played with and that's where the measurements would be different -- possibly different -- from what they are in a controlled environment and that's what we found."
NFL rules state that footballs must have air pressure between 12.5 PSI and 13.5 PSI. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said Thursday that his preference is for the balls to be at the minimum legal level, right at 12.5 PSI. Belichick explained Saturday that the Patriots' experiment revealed how a properly inflated ball could lose air pressure due to variables such as weather and temperature.
"We found that once the footballs were on the field over an extended period of time, in other words they were adjusted to the climatic conditions and also the fact that the footballs which an equilibrium without the rubbing process after that had run its course and the footballs reached an equilibrium, that they were down approximately 1.5 pounds per square inch," he said. "When we brought the footballs back in after that process and retested them in a controlled environment as we have here, then those measurements rose approximately 0.5 PSI. So the net of 1.5 [PSI] back down 0.5 [PSI] is approximately 1 PSI."
Belichick also noted that the feel of the ball -- not the air pressure -- is the top priority in terms of the Patriots' preparation.
"I think the most important part of the football for the quarterback is the feel of the football," Belichick said. "I don't think there is any question about that and the exterior feel of the ball is not only critical, but it's also very easily identifiable.
"When I feel a football, I can feel the difference between slippery and tacky. I can feel the difference in the texture of the football of what degree it's broken in."
Belichick went on to say that determining air pressure wasn't as readily apparent as texture.
"The pressure of the footballs is a whole different story," he said. "It's much more difficult to feel or identify. So the focus of our pregame preparation for the footballs is based on texture and feel. I think Tom went into that extensively on Thursday and he obviously could go through it a lot better than I can because he obviously is the one touching them, but that's the heart of the process."
The Patriots are scheduled to play the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl on Feb. 1.
ESPNBoston.com's Lee Schechter and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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