The New England Patriots were stripped of a 1st and 4th round pick thanks to the NFL's hit job called DeflateGate. All of the science and facts and interrogations under oath point towards the Patriots not doing anything wrong, but that didn't stop commissioner Roger Goodell from feeling inadequate and penalizing New England.
And while all of the public support is on the Patriots side, and while the NFL has been collecting pressure data over the course of the season, it doesn't look like Patriots owner Robert Kraft will be fighting for those draft picks.
"Look, I made a strategic decision to help our guy (Brady) and to have him on the field. And then in the end, you're appealing to the person who made the ruling (Goodell)," Kraft said, via a private meeting with Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald.
"So you can fight, and not get anything. You might look good, but you're not going to accomplish (anything), rather than try to do the least controversial thing to get value for our guy. But things didn't work out the way we had hoped. But that's in the past, and we're moving on."
By calling the draft picks something "in the past," it doesn't seem like Kraft and the Patriots will actively fight Goodell to right the wrong. That won't stop Kraft from continually updating his WellsReportContext.com project (last updated January 19th, 2016), and he certainly wouldn't refuse if the league changed their mind.
The NFL could release a summary of their PSI findings prior to the Super Bowl, and perhaps that will exonerate the Patriots. Maybe that would be the necessary spark to get Kraft to ask for the draft picks.