Hall of Fame QB has an idea to make sure Deflategate never happens again
Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Griese has a pretty simple way of ensuring there won’t be a repeat of the Deflategate saga: just get rid of the rule regarding minimum air pressure in the footballs.
Griese believes that quarterbacks should have final say over how much air pressure should be in the balls, eliminating the need for another QB to go through the controversy that eventually led to the league suspending New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
“You know all this business about Deflategate and all that other stuff, what’s wrong with taking a little bit of air out of the ball and still making it legal?’’ Griese told Patriots.com. “It’s a passing league anyway. You want quarterbacks to be able to throw the ball in December when it gets colder and the ball gets slick, which it does, or in the rain when it gets slippery. Why not take a little air out of the ball? Lower the amount of air you can have in the ball, and if some quarterbacks like it harder, then you can pump it up a little. Change the degrees of error a little bit. It’s just a comfort level thing. The balls back when I played were a lot different than they are today, and I had small hands, so it was really a problem for me at times.’’
You can accuse Griese of just looking out for a fellow quarterback, but he's also coming to the defense of a player who has tormented his former team — the Dolphins.
Brady and the Patriots took legal action against the league in an attempt to avoid a suspension after an investigation found that it was "more probable than not" that Patriots employees deflated footballs during the 2015 AFC Championship Game, and that Brady was probably aware of the violations. But Brady eventually relented, announcing last July that he would not appeal his four-game suspension to the U.S. Supreme Court, ending the saga that lasted more than a year.