IRVING, Texas — Everyone involved went to great pains Wednesday to deflate a potential Deflategate II.
Giants co-owner John Mara said he doesn’t think the Steelers’ possible use of deflated footballs in a Dec. 4 home victory over his team merited further investigation, and both Pittsburgh co-owner Art Rooney II and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell agreed with him.
“It’s much ado about nothing,” Mara told The Post during a break in the league’s regularly scheduled December owners meeting. “It’s over, as far as I’m concerned.”
All sides were responding to a FOX Sports report last Sunday that the Giants had reported the Steelers to the league office for using two underinflated footballs during a 24-14 win at Heinz Field this month.
The Giants learned of the situation when they measured the balls on the sideline after both of Pittsburgh’s turnovers. Pro Football Talk later reported the two footballs were measured at 11.8 and 11.4 PSI, well below the NFL’s minimum baseline of 12.5.
The NFL, of course, has been under heavy scrutiny — especially in New England — for its football inflation policies ever since the Tom Brady saga ended up costing him a four-game suspension, even though the Patriots insisted that deflated footballs in the 2014 AFC Championship game resulted from cold weather.
Rooney denied anything nefarious by his team, pointing out that the original Deflategate controversy resulted in a new protocol in which the league measures all game balls beforehand and keeps them in the possession of the officiating crew until just before kickoff.
“I don’t think people understand that we don’t have custody of the balls anymore,” Rooney said Wednesday. “We don’t have much of an opportunity to deflate them.”
Goodell, meanwhile, proclaimed the matter closed.
“All of the league protocols being properly followed, so there’s no further follow-up on that,” Goodell said. “The teams didn’t follow up, and we didn’t follow up any further because we were comfortable that the protocols were followed.”