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With more and more coming out about Deflategate, the Ravens head coach John Harbaugh had to once again defend himself. A report by Fox Sports notes that someone in the Ravens organization tipped off the Indianapolis Colts about the deflated footballs. With the connection of Indianapolis' head coach Chuch Pagano being the Ravens' former defensive coordinator, it can be easy to speculate that the Ravens had some hand in informing the Colts about the use of underinflated footballs.
John Harbaugh says otherwise:
"I heard all that; I couldn't believe it when I heard it. It's ridiculous, it never happened. I never made any call. Nobody in our organization made any call. As a matter of fact, just to make sure I had all the facts, I called up Chuck Pagano this week and asked him, 'Did anybody else in our organization tip you off about deflated footballs?' and he said, 'No way.'
A new report has now come out contradicting the previous reports that 11 of the 12 footballs were grossly deflated. According to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, the new news is that only one ball was a full two pounds under the limit while the other 10 were just a hair below. Now conspiracy theorists everywhere will question the source of that information being that the NFL would rather see this issue deflate itself and nothing would do that faster than pointing out that only one of the footballs was majorly off, leaving everyone to assume that it was actually an accident.
Rapoport also reported that the locker room attendant under investigation by the NFL was "described as elderly". The elderly man reportedly took the two bags of 12 footballs into the restroom near the referees' room in Gillette Stadium. He stayed in the room for 98 seconds before exiting and taking the balls to the field.
The final investigation should still take a few more weeks before all is known. It will be interesting what the report says and how and if the NFL punishes the Patriots if there is anything shady in the final report. However, I'm sure that the Patriots have this as the furthest thing from their mind after winning the Super Bowl.