On Monday, Jay Glazer of FOX Sports added the next new big piece of news in #DeflateGate, reporting that the NFL has interviewed a locker room attendant who allegedly took footballs from the officials’ locker room after they had been inspected and approved “to another area on way to field” before the start of the game.
PFT can now contribute additional details to that story.
First, per a league source, the other “area on way to field” is a bathroom. The bathroom consists of one toilet and one sink and a door that locks from the inside.
Second, according to the same source, the person carried two bags of balls into the bathroom: the 12 balls to be used by the Patriots and the 12 balls to be used by the Colts.
Third, from the same source, the evidence comes from a surveillance video that was discovered by the Patriots and given to the NFL early in the investigation.
Fourth, again from the same source, the video shows the employee in the bathroom for approximately 90 seconds.
Could the employee have fished 12 balls out of a fairly large bag, deflated each of them by two pounds, put them back into the bag, and exited the bathroom in roughly 90 seconds? That question will surely become the centerpiece of the next red state/blue state debate between folks who have determined that the Patriots have done something wrong and those who are staunchly defending the franchise.
And, yes, the photo accompanying this story was taken inside one of the bathrooms at Gillette Stadium. When NBC broadcast the Ravens-Patriots playoff game from Foxboro on January 10, Florio Jr. demanded pictures from the venue. Since he didn’t specify where he wanted them from, I took one inside the bathroom and texted it to him.
He didn’t think it was funny.