Peter King says botched Deflategate story was ‘probably the biggest mistake’ of his career
King said the NFL's discipline of Tom Brady was like killing an ant with a sledgehammer.
Peter King, who recently announced his retirement after four decades of award-winning NFL coverage, said he regrets the way he handled the Deflategate story when it first came out.
“Probably the biggest mistake I made in my career that I regret to this day and when I think about it, my heart sinks” King said during an appearance on CBS Sports Radio’s “Maggie and Perloff. “I confirmed the ESPN story about the deflated footballs after DeflateGate first hit the scene.”
“It was a Monday night and I called two people who I was sure would know exactly what happened,” King added. “They both confirmed the ESPN story, so I wrote it, talked about it, and it turns out that I was wrong. That brought me a lot of shame. That really bothers me to this day that I was wrong.”
ESPN reported that 11 of the 12 footballs used in the Patriots’ win over the Colts in the 2015 AFC Championship game were under inflated by two pounds per square inch.
ESPN later added a note to the story clarifying the situation, saying that 11 of the 12 footballs were deflated by amounts ranging up to 2 pounds per square inch.
“It doesn’t matter who I talked to,” King said. “It doesn’t matter who told me anything. It’s my rear end on the line when I say something, when I confirm a story and I was wrong. That’s something that will haunt me. It literally bothers me to this day.”
King said he was bothered by his mistake along with the way the NFL disciplined the Patriots. The NFL fined the Patriots $1 million, stripped the franchise of a first-round draft pick, and Brady was suspended for the first four games of the following season.
“I’ve always thought that in that case that was Roger Goodell killing an ant with a sledgehammer because I wrote this at the time,” King said. “Tom Brady, for the previous 10 years, had been allowed when he had home games, his equipment guys had control of the footballs and when you go on the road your equipment guys didn’t have control of the footballs.”
King said he calculated Brady’s passer rating over a 10-year period and found that the numbers were essentially the same for both home and away games.
“What really ticked me off about that is that Roger Goodell commissions this study and the study says its more likely than not that Brady had a role in these footballs being doctored with,” King said. “Well, first of all, it didn’t mean anything in the first place and second of all you don’t have absolute proof that he did have something to do with it. That always really bothered me a lot both ways, me screwing it up and I think the NFL screwing up the discipline.”
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