Volin: NFL Intentionally Holding DeflateGate Report Until After Draft
BOSTON (CBS) -- Roger Goodell said in an interview Tuesday on CBS that he expects Ted Wells' DeflateGate report to be released "soon," but he did not specify exactly when the world will know what went on with the inflation of footballs at the AFC Championship Game.
The Boston Globe's Ben Volin said Wednesday morning that he believes the report is completed and ready to go, but the league is waiting until after the NFL Draft to release the results.
"Definitely. Absolutely. 100 percent," Volin said when asked if the NFL is intentionally waiting until after the draft to release Wells' report. "I think in waiting this long it's made it less of a story. People stopped caring. It's still big here in New England, obviously, and for the hardcore football fans. But for just your average fan, I don't think DeflateGate is much of a story anymore. So I think they've done a good job of minimizing it.
"And then, I thought of this yesterday -- Bill Belichick is supposed to talk to the media this weekend after the draft, and then after that, we might not hear from him again until either mid-June at minicamp or maybe not even until training camp in August. So I think the NFL office is going to do the Patriots a favor, they'll wait until after this weekend, so that we don't have the opportunity to ask Belichick questions about it. And then when we do in August, he'll say, 'Well that's old territory, we're just trying to move on now.'
"So I think that the NFL office is definitely waiting on purpose, trying to minimize the damage of this thing, and then releasing it at a time when the media can't go around and ask the owners and Bill Belichick a million different questions about it."
That theory got Rich Shertenlieb thinking that there must be some bit of damning information in the report -- though it wouldn't necessarily condemn the Patriots. Volin agreed.
"It tells me that there's going to be some damning information in there, but I'm not sure it's going to be against the Patriots," Volin said. "I think there's going to be stuff in there that makes the NFL look bad. I mean, they supposedly had a rogue ball boy who's stealing balls intended for charity and selling them off for profit. It's going to make maybe the officials look bad for not always following the exact letter of the rule. And it might make the Colts look bad for who knows what their involvement was in this, and they went running straight to the media right after the game on that Sunday night, putting the NFL in a really bad spot. I think if the Colts didn't do that, maybe this story gets handled a little more quietly and internally, but the Colts kind of blew the lid open on the whole thing.
"So I think this report is just not going to make a lot of different entities look very good," Volin continued. "And so I think they've been waiting [to release] it, they're waiting until after the draft so that Bill Belichick's not asked questions about what he thinks about how the league handled everything and the ball procedures and all of that sort of thing. I just think this report's not going to make a lot of different entities look good, and they're probably taking their time to shore up the different rules about the ball procedures and making sure that this kind of mistake doesn't happen again."
Volin also discussed the upcoming draft, the NFL's ruling on the Jets' tampering with Darrelle Revis, and more. Listen below:
