Chris Mortensen admits he should have vetted out deflate-gate report better
Did we learn anything from Chris Mortensen’s appearance on the Dan Le Batard Show on ESPN?
Mortensen, you surely know by now, was the author of the original tweet (and later a news story on ESPN.com to follow) that set match and kindling to the gas can to be known as deflate-gate. Prior to that report — which proved to be horribly inaccurate, per the ensuring Wells report — the story was in a slow simmer. But after it came out, much of the football-watching world assumed full guilt by Tom Brady and the New England Patriots as blatant rule breakers who were deserving of Iron Maiden treatment.
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Since then, Patriots fans have rallied against NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Wells and nearly anybody seemingly aligned against their favorite quarterback — and Mortensen and his flashpoint report has not been spared their wrath. Patriots owner Robert Kraft referenced the initial report of 11 of the 12 Patriots balls being more than 2 PSI under the allowed floor in his unexpected rant, and the team previously begged for the NFL to investigate and shut down the false leak to ESPN to no avail. (And there are people who still believe it’s true, by the way.)
After canceling an appearance on Boston radio station WEEI, Mortensen opted to tell his side of the story on home turf, but it’s not clear how much it helped. He stumbled through some answers to Le Batard when asked about the ongoing saga, admitting he failed to correct the original tweet (which, as you can see, still exists; Mortensen blamed it on “still trying to figure [Twitter] out”) and wishing he had vetted out his sources better. And no, Mort did not reveal his sources, understandably.
Mortensen did say he spoke with Kraft on the matter and that the Patriots owner’s beef is not with him, but rather with the NFL for failing to clean up this mess that Kraft assumes was a blatant leak in order to drum up public interest in the case and implicate the Patriots in the court of public opinion.
For the second straight year, a ridiculous — varying definitions of the word, too — off-field story has dominated the NFL headlines as training camps opened. A year ago, it was the Ray Rice too-light suspension/the elevator tape/Goodell’s possible removal. That was deemed worthy of a former FBI investigator looking into whether the NFL received the tapes well ahead of time.
This year, it’s deflate-gate, which still has more air than ever and has shifted narratives seemingly with each passing week. But it doesn’t appear the NFL is too interested in rehiring Robert Mueller to look into whether the NFL sought to do anything to correct the Mort report initially, which changed this whole story. Wells appeared to pass on that offer, and Goodell has sidestepped the false-report question whenever he has been asked about it.
For now, things remain the same. But Patriots fans are not letting go of their anger.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
