The spin is on. People are blaming the NFL for bringing in someone to conduct the investigation that has ties with the Jets.
http://www.csnne.com/new-england-patriots/jets-connection-appearing-deflategate-probe?p=ya5nbcs&ocid=yahoo
As the Deflategate investigation continues, scrutiny on the Patriots will soon lead to questions about what prompted the investigation in the first place.
Who suspected subterfuge? Who pushed the league to gather evidence? Was the motivation simply a principled, “integrity of the game” platform or was it an attempt to settle old scores?
Earlier this week, we pointed out the possible motivation of the Ravens and Colts. It’s all laid out here.
Those are two of the Patriots most bitter conference rivals, having played against the Patriots in a total of nine playoff games since 2003 with the Patriots going 6-3 in those games.
The only other rival with similar bitterness? The New York Jets.
The NFL man on-site to start the investigation in the AFC Championship was Mike Kensil. He is the NFL Vice President of Game Operations. You may remember him as the gentleman John Harbaugh took his frustration out on during the Super Bowl power outage in 2012. Harbaugh later apologized. He does that a lot.
Before rising to the league level, Kensil was the Jets director of operations for nearly 20 years. His tenure overlapped Bill Parcells (and Bill Belichick’s) time with the Jets and he would have been part of the Jets front office incensed by Belichick’s 2000 resignation as Jets head coach.
Kensil’s tenure with the Jets ended in 2006, the same year Belichick disciple Eric Mangini became head coach of the Jets.
Multiple sources have indicated that Kensil is the driving force behind the investigation and that his interest in deflated balls did not begin in January but actually began earlier in the year.
Kensil’s professional reputation is strong and people I’ve spoken to have described him as having strong integrity.
That Jets connection, though, certainly hints at a preexisting judgment of Belichick and the Patriots that could, conceivably, be a motivating factor in the league’s dogged pursuit.
Just how much do the Jets revile New England?
Former Jets special teams coach Mike Westhoff unloaded on New England in a phone interview with the Toronto Sun this week, saying, “If it’s anybody that walks the edge on the rules, it’s these guys,” Westhoff said. “Sometimes they remind me a little bit of Enron — they’re always the smartest guys in the room, until some day maybe they’re not. That’s how I feel about them.”
Westhoff was the Jets’ special teams coach from 2001 to 2012.
He asked, “Did they do it? I honestly don’t think they did. To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure they’re not sitting around today thinking, ‘I wish we’d thought this up,’ knowing them."
Westhoff doesn’t like even helping New England in this way, however.
“As much as I hate to, I’m going to defend them,” Westhoff said. “And trust me, I hate to defend them. (Spygate) was only a part of it. The number of things that were like this? There’s only a handful of them that have been made public.
“Trust me, what I’m tellin’ you. There are quite a few others. Clock violations. You can go on and on. There’s a whole s---load.”
