With Super Bowl XLIX's exciting, last minute conclusion, the 2014-15 NFL season officially drew to a close.
The New England Patriots emerged victorious for the fourth time in the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady era and the Seattle Seahawks limped home to an offseason full of second-guesses.
One piece of NFL business that has not yet reached its ultimate conclusion though, is the Patriots DeflateGate scandal, which followed the franchise in the wake of their AFC Championship Game victory and up to the season's final game.
The issue has garnered a variety of reactions from a number of players and media outlets, but maybe none has been as strong or hard to believe as the one put forth by former NFL quarterback and current CBS Sports analyst, Boomer Esiason.
Esiason, appearing on 98.5 The Sports Hub with Toucher & Rich, said that he believes the scandal is a conspiracy created by Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh and Indianapolis Colts head coach Chuck Pagano to embarrass Pats quarterback, Tom Brady.
"If you notice, Harbaugh never went after Bill Belichick and never said anything negative about him as a coach for the previous two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. Next week the Patriots are playing the Colts, and their head coach is Chuck Pagano, who was once defensive coordinator under John Harbaugh and the Ravens. They're all close and they're all tight," explained Esiason, per CBS Boston.
"This is what I believe happened: they all wanted to embarrass Tom Brady, and they wanted to put him on the spit if you will. They wanted to make him answer questions about said rule book."
The Ravens, of course, lost to the Patriots in the second-round of the playoffs, while the Colts fell to Belichick's crew in the AFC Championship Game. The Ravens, according to reports, alerted the league to their suspicion that there were inflation issues with the balls they used for kicking during their game against New England. The next week, the league inspected the balls the Patriots were using on offense against the Colts during halftime of the AFC Championship Game, based on a tip from Colts GM Ryan Grigson.
Esiason, who spent 14 seasons as an NFL player, believes the league is built on petty insecurities and backstabbing and this led directly to the development of the conspiracy.
"You can say whatever you want about DeflateGate, and who said what, but to me this is about how the NFL operates: it's backstabbing, it's insecure and it's childish. 'You want to call me out? I'm going to call you out. You want to embarrass me? Guess what I'm going to embarrass you.' I'm telling you, this is the way the NFL works.
"At the end of the day, Tom Brady is the one who's got the last laugh. He's got his third Super Bowl MVP trophy and his fourth Super Bowl."
