NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell answered questions today at his Super Bowl press conference regarding the now infamous deflategate that involved Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. It was alleged that in the AFC Championship game in 2015, the Patriots used deflated balls in the first half, giving them an advantage.
Goodell gave his thoughts on how the whole incident played out, and said that they found no violations in what the Patriots were alleged to have done.
“We were very clear that we going to do spot checks to make sure people were following the policies," he said. "That is something that we fully engaged in and I don’t’ know what happened to the data to be honest with you. We don’t look back at that, we just make sure there’s no violations, that’s the purpose of the spot checks. Are there violations? And if there are violations then we need to look into it. Thankfully, we did not see any,” Goodell finished.
Patriots beat reporter Dakota Randall was less than impressed with the commissioner's comments, calling it a "Goodellian denial."
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Randall then posted a section of the report from Pro Football Talk to give context to his tweet.
Fans grill Goodell of his comments
As expected, NFL fans did not take too kindly to the Goodell's comments. With one Twitter user saying that the commissioner's sentiments at the press conference reflected an attitude that said "I'm not here to talk about the past."
Another user then posted that the league only checked for violations in 2015, which they found "weird."
A user by the name of Scott then posted that Brady was banned for four games for essentially nothing.
The Patriots lost draft picks as part of their punishment from the NFL. One user suggesting that seeing as the Patriots were found to have done nothing wrong, they should get their picks back.
The hits kept coming for the commissioner following his comments, with one fan saying it was a bold-faced lie on his part.
A user called Grant Moore then posted that the league spent $30 million on the deflategate incident only to find out the office lied about the incident and destroyed the evidence.
Another fan posted that Goodell is simply a liar who has been dishonest for a long time.
One user then took it a step further, suggesting there is a much bigger story behind Goodell and his handling of the Deflategate scandal.
One Twitter user simply called for the commissioner to resign due to his incompetence.
In keeping with the scathing attacks, user Matt Blaze posted that the commissioner is a "scum bag."
Independent reporter Dov Kleiman then posted that the commissioner took no accountability for the Deflategate investigation.
It has been a bad week for the NFL all-round. With Brian Flores and his allegations of racism and discrimination, to Alvin Kamara being arrested and now this. One imagines that now is definitely not a good time to be NFL Commissioner.
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