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Plenty of folks suspect that the league office will sweep under the rug the question of whether the Patriots deliberately deflated their allotment of balls in order to make them easier to grip on a very wet day in Foxboro. If that’s what the league plans to do, it will happen quickly and publicly.

The NFL already has acknowledged the existence of an investigation, and a league source tells PFT that statement from the league could be coming very soon — as in this morning.

It’s still unclear what happened and how it happened. It’s also unrealistic to think that a conspiracy could be kept quiet, if the Patriots were deliberately deflating footballs. Unless the circle of conspirators was extremely small and the Patriots were able to secure possession of the balls after they’d been given to the referee for testing and supervision two hours and 15 minutes before kickoff, it should be easy to get down the rabbit hole on this one.

Given the franchise’s history, that’s precisely what the league seems to be doing, sooner rather than later. Surely, the league office realizes the importance of a full investigation and complete transparency; those failures nearly brought down a Commissioner over a topic that had nothing to do with the playing of games. Anything other than a full and complete investigation of a situation that has an impact on the game could bring down the league.