Patriots follow up story

Former NFL official said he was long suspicious of Patriots’ Jim McNally

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/former-nfl-official-said-he-was-long-suspicious-of-patriots–jim-mcnally–200419566.html

Clearly I was too confident Thursday morning when I wrote that we could hopefully go a few days without hearing about deflate-gate after the NFL announced that it had reinstated New England Patriots employees John Jastremski and Jim McNally, the pair named heavily in Ted Wells’ report.

Because here we are six hours later and the d-word has reared its ugly head – again.

This time it’s courtesy of WTHR Indianpolis reporter Bob Kravitz (who broke the deflate-gate story in the hours after the AFC championship game), who has former NFL linesman Mark Baltz saying thathe was long suspicious of McNally, the game-day worker who served as a locker room attendant and was in charge of shuttling the Patriots’ footballs to officials and then to the field.

“He always asked for the footballs way, way before he was supposed to get them,’’ said Baltz, who was an NFL official from 1989-2013. Baltz spoke to WTHR.com last week, before the pair was reinstated. “If he could get them 10 or 15 minutes before he was supposed to get them, instead of the usual two minutes before the game – and there were some crews that let him do that – he would do it. I wouldn’t let him take them early, and I think he eventually figured that out because he stopped asking after a while. I probably did 10 to 15 games up there (in Foxboro, Mass.) and those first few times, he’d always ask. I always thought it was very suspicious. He certainly acted in a suspicious manner.’’

Baltz does not make any specific accusations against McNally, though he says he reported McNally to the NFL “six or eight years ago” over McNally’s early requests for the footballs and his behavior before and during games.

“For an officials’ locker room attendant, I always thought he was an unusual dude,’’ Baltz said. “Most locker room guys, they sit there and if you need something, they got it for you. When you left the locker room, you’d lock the door and they’d stay right there. The other 31 teams, that’s what they would do. That was his job.

“But McNally, he was running all around like a chicken with his head cut off. Asking for the balls early. What I specifically reported him for several years ago, and I thought this was really unusual, he’d run out on the field with the footballs before the game and the next thing you know, he’s playing pitch-and-catch with [Tom] Brady. Then, next thing, he’s on the sidelines right next to [Bill] Belichick, like he’s a [bleeping] assistant coach or something.”

There is at least one problem with Baltz’s story: according to reports, McNally became the locker room attendant in 2008, and worked only Patriots home games, and according to pro-football-reference.com, Baltz worked only four games in New England from 2008 until retiring in 2013. The Patriots were 2-2 in those games, including their divisional-round playoff loss to the New York Jetsat the end of the 2010 season.