Miss by Chiefs’ Harrison Butker may have been result of underinflated football
Hey, you can’t pin it on Tom Brady this time.
Nearly a decade after the much-ballyhooed “Deflategate” drama surrounding the Patriots’ use of underinflated footballs in the 2014 AFC Championship Game, a similar situation played out Sunday at Foxborough, Massachusetts.
Mark Daniels of MassLive.com reported that footballs used by the kicking units for both teams in the first half of the Chiefs’ 27-17 win over the Patriots weighed in at 11 pounds per square inch (PSI). The NFL rulebook says footballs are supposed to be inflated to between 12 1/2 and 13 1/2 pounds.
The Patriots noticed something was amiss because of the opening kickoff by the Chiefs’ Harrison Butker, the MassLive story said. It went to the Patriots’ 3-yard line rather than landing in the end zone.
“This season, Butker has hit 87.1% of his kickoffs for touchbacks,” Daniels wrote. “As the half went on, the team noticed that the trajectory and hang time of kickoffs and punts were lower than usual. Another source noted that the kicking balls were unusually soft to the touch.
“With each kick, punt, and kickoff attempt, it felt like something was off and it appeared to impact each team.”
The Patriots alerted officials at halftime and they were inflated to regulation size for the second half.
Kickers use K-balls that have been selected by the special-teams units and are prepped before a game by each team’s equipment managers, as an Athletic story noted. Here’s a look at the process.
K-balls are not used during pregame warmups, Daniels reported, and that would explain why no one noticed the underinflation Sunday until the game started.
Butker’s first miss
The Chiefs’ first drive of Sunday’s game ended with a 39-yard field goal attempt by Harrison Butker. It was wide right, Butker’s first miss of the season. He had been perfect on field-goal and extra-point attempts.
Here is video of the miss from X user Chris Mason.
There’s no way to know if the underinflated football was to blame. But after the balls were inflated at halftime, Butker made field goals of 29 and 54 yards.
Butker is now 25 of 26 on field-goal attempts this season and he hasn’t missed any of his 34 extra-point tries.
After the original “Deflategate,” the Patriots were fined $1 million by the league, lost two draft picks and saw Brady suspended for four games. It seems unlikely the NFL would issue that type of penalty this time around.
Both teams missed field-goal attempts Sunday but it was more significant for Butker as his perfect streak came to end.
