Bengals debate Deflategate relevance
Jon Kitna can picture it clearly.
Heinz Field in Pittsburgh was a chilly 44 degrees on Oct. 7, 2001, and the new Cincinnati Bengals quarterback was not having a good day. It was the fourth game of the season, and the Steelers won 16-7 to drop the Bengals to 2-2.
For Kitna, now 42 years old and a high school football coach in Waxahachie, Texas, the memory isn't so much that the Bengals lost, but how they lost.
He went 19 for 34 for 164 yards with a touchdown and an interception for a rating of 66.3.
"I'll never forget," Kitna said. "The first time I played in Pittsburgh that ball was brand new and it was darn near impossible to throw it."
Kitna recalls that game, and that year specifically, because it was a period of time in the National Football League that visiting quarterbacks had to use game footballs that were nearly new. The difference between that era of football preparation and the footballs he threw in Detroit in Dallas following a rule change in 2006 was stark.
"Oh absolutely. Absolutely," Kitna said. "2001 was the year in particular that I remember they were doing this deal where they were trying to make the balls come right out of the box. That was … that was really difficult to be effective consistently."
A small chuckle of resignation broke up that last sentence.
Kitna definitely remembered that in 2001 he led the league in pass attempts with 581 but had, in some ways, the worst season of his career. He completed a career-worst 53.9 percent of his throws, set career lows in rating (61.1) and yards per attempt (5.5) and set a career high in interceptions with 22.
During that era, officials were responsible for preparing game balls within the parameters set by Wilson, the official manufacturer of NFL footballs. After that, a member of the home team's equipment staff could inspect the game balls and provide additional prep under official supervision.
Kitna wasn't the only quarterback who felt allowing the home staff and officials to prepare game balls created issues, so a group of signal callers, led by Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, helped initiate a change in the NFL rules before the 2006 season.
Beginning in 2006, quarterbacks were permitted to briefly test 12 footballs during the week leading up to the game, but could not use them during the week or pregame.
The NFL has ruled that Brady broke that rule by having a role in the improper deflation of game balls during the 2014 AFC playoffs. His suspension is currently under appeal, and a decision is expected sometime this month.
What's happened since it was discovered that the Patriots' offense played with altered footballs has been a cacophony of voices from in and around the league, from retired and active players, debating the effectiveness and relevance of deflating a football by several pounds per square inch.
Which is why in January, former Bengals quarterback Jeff Blake went on 104.5 The Zone in Nashville to talk about his experiences with manipulating game footballs during his playing days, saying "everybody puts the pin in and takes just enough air out the ball so you can feel it a little bit better. But not to the point to where it's flat. So I don't know what the big deal is."
Blake, who played for seven teams in his 13-year career and made the 1995 Pro Bowl with the Bengals, then said that during warmups in pre-game, he would tell ball boys to let out some air to his specifications.
"I'd squeeze it and I'd be like, 'OK, it's perfect,'" Blake told The Zone. "That's it."
For his part, Kitna said he wasn't concerned about ball pressure during his pre-2006 career - it was about the slickness of the leather. He also said he allowed any working over of any ball to the equipment staff during the week.
"It really made them difficult to throw when they had all the sheen on them and things like that," Kitna said. "Then they started allowing people to break them in and work at them and then re-use them from week to week. I didn't spend a ton of time thinking about (the inflation) or anything like that."
Former Bengals tight end Tony McGee played with Blake from 1994 through 1999, catching 259 passes for 3,338 yards and 18 touchdowns in that window, chuckled at the idea that his former quarterback would alter a game ball.
"I don't know what Jeff did or didn't do the balls, that would be a quarterback thing," McGee said from his office at HNM Global Logistics in Florida. "It's kind of one of those things, hear no evil, see no evil. It's one of things that you don't really talk about what they do. And kickers, they do all kinds of goofy stuff to the balls, too. They put them under their stomach, oh, I've got to let it touch my skin, all kind of weird things. I don't know what Jeff did. All I know is whatever Jeff did in '95 he should've kept doing it because he had a great year."
But McGee did allow that for a pass catcher, there was definitely a difference in catching a ball that was fully inflated as opposed to one that was slightly softer.
"You definitely notice, especially when it was cold out," he said. "That leather freezes. And if it's new and it hasn't been scuffed up a little bit, I mean, I'm sitting there looking at my hands and I've got a couple jammed fingers from balls that came because they were fully inflated. If you think about it, you're grabbing a ball, when that ball's coming at you and it's got a little give you can kind of squeeze into more. It's a slight advantage.
"I'm not going to say it's that big of a deal because if you've got brick hands you've got brick hands."
By the letter of the law, Blake broke the rules by having the balls altered prior to 2006. And even though the rules were amended after that point, if Brady - or any other quarterback further altered them - it's still playing out of bounds.
"Yeah. If it's in the rule book, follow the rules," Bengals cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick said when asked if he cared about a quarterback depressurizing a ball.
"They're going to handle it how they want to handle it, but I feel like if it's in the rule book, follow the rules. We can't touch 'em down the field (after) five yards, so follow the rules."
Super Bowl winning head coach and current NFL Network analyst Brian Billick agreed with Kirkpatrick in that it's a black and white issue when it comes to the rules, but finds Blake, and other quarterback's sentiments that breaking the rules wasn't a big deal, hard to swallow.
"It's unfortunate," said Billick, who was a head coach in Baltimore before, and after, the rules changed from 1999 through 2007. "It was a missed opportunity to show that the league is better than that. The most grating thing that I hear when I hear people talking about, especially the 'well, everybody does that.' Well no, we don't. Not everybody does that."
For Billick, the reason why you don't cross the line is simple: integrity.
"When you're talking about the integrity of the league and the rules – a rule's a rule," he said. "It's like the proverbial 'being a little bit pregnant.' The rules are part of the integrity of this league, so anything that diminishes that is not good for the league."