H78 said:
If I'm every other team in the NFL, I'm probably pretty pissed at the Colts right now. The Pats were wrong for doing this, but to actually be the team that reports it - as if it's really the reason you're constantly losing by 20+ points - now puts a special spotlight on ball quality before every single NFL game moving forward.
Rogers now will have to live with 12.5-13.5 PSI. Balls will likely no longer be used for practice. Manning and Brady will no longer get to "scrub" the game balls or whatever before games. Whatever anyone else does - forget it.
All because of your sour grapes, Pagano and Co.
That's where I'm at too. I don't blame Brady, Manning, Rodgers, and essentially every other team in the NFL for taking advantage of a poorly written and even more poorly placed rule. Hell, imagine if MLB did this, allowing pitchers to use their own game balls that need only meet a small number or specifications in a brief pre-game inspection.
As far as the Colts' reaction, it's akin to the team that notices the 3rd base coach is about 10 feet from home plate and, knowing their 3rd base coach doesn't use those kinds of angles all that often but everyone else in the league does, complains to the umps that the coach is out of his box. It's an inane rule from a different time where coaches wandering was a problem for the game. What makes the rule worse here is that a handful of the game's elite quarterbacks wanted to skew the playing field to their advantage and the league gave it the okay. I don't seem to remember there being an outcry of stifling defenses that required our quarterbacks to have things done their way. In the meantime, a league that already has trouble keeping its member teams' players in line is now allowing the game balls to be in the hands of the teams involved the entire week prior, with said teams able to make alterations as they see fit.
In a logical world, the NFL admits the rule change was a horrible idea and reverts game ball control to the league, beginning with the Super Bowl. Unless the Patriots can be proven to have altered the balls on the sidelines, slap them on the wrists with the $25k fine, and even then, I'm not comfortable with the Patriots being fined without absolute proof of wrongdoing. Sadly, all the evidence the public and, just as likely, the league will get is a flimsy report of all the Patriots balls being underinflated without any real proof of anything happening and Goodell will Goodell this decision in some horrible, stupid way.