Kraft confirms what we already knew: Deflategate was a big waste of time

That must have been one magical hug.

If Robert Kraft and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did indeed finally play nice, as ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported the duo did Tuesday morning at the NFL owners meetings in San Francisco, then the alleged embrace clearly featured Goodell crumpling up the once-defiant Kraft and folding him into his back pocket once again.

For the good of the NFL, of course.

Kraft, the same man who demanded an apology from Goodell and the league stemming from Deflategate accusations in January, collapsed at the feet of his ruler Tuesday morning in the shadow of Alcatraz. A prisoner of the NFL and its sanctions in the wake of the Wells Report, Kraft “reluctantly” accepted the league’s punishment — a $1 million fine and the loss of a pair of draft picks — only six days after his franchise’s bloated, contextual retort.

What was the point?

Given the option to “extend it or end it” (coming to an HGTV series any day now), Kraft kowtowed to Goodell, a moment we all should have seen coming if not for the Nike-brazen billionaire’s staunch posturing that his team had done nothing wrong. It was a refreshing look from Kraft, the man once referred to as the “assistant commissioner” in GQ Magazine. Clearly, it was all a farce.

“You know what I’ve learned over the last two decades is that the heart and soul of the strength of the NFL is a partnership of 32 teams,” Kraft said during his press conference, after which he didn’t take any questions. “What’s become very clear over those two decades [is] that at no time should the agenda of one team outweigh the collective good of the full 32. So, I have a way of looking at problems that are very strong in my mind.

“So, in that spirit, I don’t want to continue the rhetoric that’s gone on for the last four months. I’m going to accept, reluctantly, what he has given to us and not continue this dialogue and rhetoric. We won’t appeal.”

Well. This was all an enormous waste of time.

There are only two lines of thinking in trying to rationalize why Kraft chose to take this route. Either there’s some sort of back-door deal with Goodell that will reduce or exonerate Tom Brady and his four-game suspension, or the commissioner informed Kraft that there were more leaks to come in regard to his team’s guilt. Sports Illustrated’s Greg Bedard has already reported that he “was told by a high-ranking NFL source that Kraft’s decision to stand down does not include a deal on Brady.”

If that’s the case, then the only logical conclusion to come to is guilt.

Yes, Kraft would have joined a group of owners that includes Al Davis and Donald Sterling as the only professional North American teams to sue their league, but neither of those lightning rods had to deal with a dictator on the level of Goodell, a power-hungry falsehood of integrity who has the ability to hide behind his league’s tainted shield and the billions of dollars that his 31 other owners bathe themselves in.

This has to be hard for Patriots fans to take, whether or not they see Brady before Game 5 in Indianapolis. After all, it’s been four months of standing behind their team, four months of defying the NFL and its alleged witch hunt into what exactly happened on that wet, warm and humid night in January. If the NFL and Ted Wells indeed have nothing, why stand down? Why, pray tell, waste dollars and time on lawyers to file a 19,000-word retort that only makes the team look like excuse-mongers?

“If the Wells investigation is not able to definitively determine that our organization tampered with the air pressure on the footballs, I would expect and hope that the league would apologize to our entire team and, in particular, coach [Bill] Belichick and Tom Brady for what they have had to endure this past week,” Kraft said upon his team’s Super Bowl arrival at its hotel in Chandler, Arizona.

Patriots fans expected more. They hoped for more. Instead, what they got was Kraft relenting to his powerful buddy’s demands, leading into speculation that he either made a deal that sacrificed his team’s drafting future, or understanding there was more to his team’s involvement than Wells could fit in 243 pages.

“I don’t think anyone can believe that after four months [since] the AFC Championship game we are still talking about air pressure and the psi in footballs,” Kraft said.

No, Bob, we don’t.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to end though, arguably the most powerful owner in the NFL, helpless to the league’s despot. That Bob was our last hope.

There isn’t another. Bob Kraft has quit and Roger Goodell has won.

Good luck to Kraft finding his fan base’s respect in the commissioner’s wallet.