Want more evidence that “deflategate” is the biggest non-story ever? How it’s all a media-driven “scandal” that no one, and I mean no one, should ever care about? How all of this nonsense this week was nothing but over-blown media hype?
We now turn to former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Jeff Blake.
“I’m just going to let the cat of the bag, every team does it, every game, it has been since I played,” Blake said on a local talk show in Nashville.
“‘Cause when you take the balls out of the bag, they are rock hard. And you can’t feel the ball as well. It’s too hard. Everybody puts the pin in and lets just enough air out of the ball that you can feel it a little better. But it’s not the point to where it’s flat.”
“So I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s not something that’s not been done for 20 years.”
Right. NO BIG DEAL. Yet, the entire media, not just the sports media but the regular news side have been treating this like it’s THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER.
Or as Bill Maher said during the monologue of his show this past Friday, “turn on CNN and you would think that Tom Brady had caught ebola and crashed a Malaysian airliner into Benghazi.”
Jeff Blake also talked about where and when this very common practice would be done.
“As soon as they give them the balls,” Blake said. “On the sideline before the game. The quarterbacks would come out to warm up in pregame … I would just say, ‘Take a little bit out, it’s a little bit hard.’ And then they’d take a little bit out and I’d squeeze them and say ‘That’s perfect.’ That’s it.”
Jeff Blake finished his career with the Chicago Bears, but also played for five other teams, in addition to the Bears and Bengals. His only Pro Bowl appearance came with the Bengals, and he set a new Pro Bowl record by throwing a 92-yard touchdown pass to Yancey Thigpen in that game.
Blake’s best seasons came with Cincinnati in the mid-to-late 1990s and he established great rapport with Bengal receivers Carl Pickens and Darnay Scott, helping the former vie for the receiving title in 1995.
Jeff Blake was signed by the Chicago Bears before the 2005 NFL season to replace back-up quarterback Chad Hutchinson. Following an injury to the Bears’ starting quarterback, Rex Grossman, coach Lovie Smith opted to select rookie Kyle Orton to fill the slot. During the last game of the regular NFL season, Blake was put in to replace Kyle Orton during the fourth quarter, completing eight of nine passes.
At the conclusion of his fourteen-year career, Jeff Blake amassed 21,711 passing yards, with 134 touchdown passes, and 99 interceptions. A mobile quarterback, Jeff Blake ran for 2,027 career rushing yards and 14 touchdowns over exactly 100 career starts.
Stay tuned as The Sports Bank will have an exclusive with Jeff Blake later today. We will post the podcast here and have some Bears and Super Bowl related material with Jeff Blake posted tomorrow morning.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive Inc.
You can read Banks’ feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)