Bill Belichick: Pats ‘Absolutely Followed Every Rule to the Letter’

An unusually animated Bill Belichick insisted to reporters on Saturday afternoon that his team didn’t intentionally break any rules.

“At no time was there any intent whatsoever to try to compromise the integrity of the game or to gain an advantage,” the three-time Super Bowl-winning coach said the the controversy of under-pressurized balls used in the first half of the AFC Championship Game.

Belichick described a scientific experiment undertaken by the Patriots that showed a drop in air pressure for footballs inflated at 12.5 pounds per square inch (PSI) and left outside for a period of time.

“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,” Belichick noted. “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.”

In other words, the footballs lost a pound of pressure per square inch after an indoor retest after exposure to the elements. Belichick said he was “embarrassed” to have spent so much time learning about the subject.

Belichick’s presser, his second of the week to address the matter, comes on the heels of a statement from team owner Robert Kraft pledging full cooperation with the NFL’s investigation. The league announced Friday that they had interviewed “nearly 40” individuals. The Baltimore Ravens, defeated by the Patriots two weeks ago, confirm that the league interviewed team employees as part of the investigation.

Belichick maintains, “I believe now 100 percent that I have personally and we as an organization have absolutely followed every rule to the letter.”