DeflateGate: Bill Belichick's Press Conference and "We're On To Tom Brady"

Patriots head coach held his press conference this morning and set out to nip the DeflateGate talk in the bud.

Of the things Belichick said, here are the highlights:

He was shocked to hear of this on Monday morning and had no idea.

He had no idea about the process of football pregame preparation.

He makes practice as difficult as possible on the players to make sure that the game is never more difficult, so he's not empathetic to the player's desire for easier balls to use.

The media should talk to Tom Brady about his personal preference with ball pressure.

Belichick never talked ball pressure with his staff (which multiple sources have confirmed as true).

Patriots will inflate beyond the 12.5 PSI minimum in the future to avoid this from happening again.

Patriots have quickly and fully cooperated with the league's investigation.

It's unfortunate that this is happening after two excellent playoff victories.

That's everything that Belichick knows on the matter.

Belichick essentially deferred the question of desired ball pressure to Brady, which means that this issue will likely come down to Brady and his side of the story. Belichick came off as honest and really wanted to move forward from this whole ordeal to play some football.

It is difficult to believe that a coach like Belichick, who is so focused on the details and is able to work his way through the rulebook to generate shorthanded offensive line plays, was unaware of the rules surrounding the football. But as multiple sources (Adam Schefter, Greg Bedard, former players, former coaches, and more) have confirmed that Belichick has never talked about ball pressure, there's some weight to the claim that the subject has never been brought up before.

Some might say that Belichick threw Brady under the bus, but there's zero chance that the head coach and quarterback didn't talk prior to these press conferences. They know exactly how they're going to approach this as a team.

Brady has moved his schedule press conference from tomorrow to today at 4PM EST. We'll report more at that time.