Deflate-gate finally pushed good-guy Pats owner Robert Kraft to blast the NFL

CHANDLER, Ariz. – Seventy-three-year-old Robert Kraft is best known as an agreeable, affable, one-time New England Patriots season-ticket holder turned owner. He made billions in the paper industry, was married to the same woman for 48 years and favors French-cut dress shirts, blue with a white collar that holds a soft pink tie.

This is not a brawler. This is a consensus builder, a philanthropist, a man who is known for creating a family atmosphere in all of his businesses. Maybe no one loves the NFL like Bob Kraft.

Yet there Kraft was Monday, slowly rocking back and forth as he read from a prepared statement here at the Patriots' team hotel before the Super Bowl, blasting the league with everything he had.

He was angry. He was stern. He was fighting, for his coach and quarterback, for his franchise, for his own good family name.

All of it has been under attack since word broke over a week ago that the NFL was investigating how and why New England's footballs were underinflated in the AFC championship game victory over Indianapolis.

"I want to make it clear that I believe unconditionally that the New England Patriots have done nothing inappropriate in this process or in violation of NFL rules," Kraft said, citing an internal review the team has done over the last week.

This is how old Ivy League rich guys talk trash, how they deliver verbal smacks and warnings of more.

Robert Kraft, the NFL insider of all NFL insiders, is so aghast at how the NFL has let this play out, how a series of one-sided media leaks the team believes is coming from the league office has painted the Pats as cheaters. And whatever relationship he has with commissioner Roger Goodell is now clearly strained.

Kraft went far enough to demand that if (or when, he seems to believe) the league comes up empty in this case, it should come with an apology.

"If the [NFL] investigation is not able to definitively determine that our organization tampered with the air pressure on the footballs, I would expect and hope that the league would apologize to our entire team, and in particular, coach [Bill] Belichick and Tom Brady for what they have had to endure this past week," Kraft said.

This was unprecedented. Not in Kraft's defense of his organization but in his attack on the league that he is known as a central figure in, and more specifically the operation of Goodell's league office, which he so often defends.

His anger stems from how, the Patriots believe, the league office keeps leaking to the media damaging evidence of unknown accuracy in the middle of what is supposed to be a closed-lip investigation.

This isn't playing out like an internal company review. It's more like how police and prosecutors use the media to frame a case toward inevitable charges.

It started last Monday when ESPN cited sources that 11 of 12 New England footballs tested approximately 2 pounds per square inch of pressure below league standards. Suddenly, a curious case became a national phenomenon.

By having that information, and only that information out there, the sentiment around the story from the public and media was that the Patriots were guilty. There was no context or alternative info. The assumptions were that Belichick and Brady were up to some trick.

There were cries of them being cheaters and calls for them to be suspended, even for Sunday's Super Bowl against the Seattle Seahawks.

It continued right through New England's flight here from Boston on Monday when a Fox Sports report said the league had identified a "person of interest," a yet unnamed Patriots "locker room attendant … who allegedly took balls from officials' locker room to another area on way to field."

The report concluded that the NFL is "still gauging if any wrongdoing occurred" but they've interviewed the person and there is "video."

Kraft said he prepared his remarks on the flight, so perhaps this report is the one that sent him over the top.

Why would a story come out that suggests a guilty party if no one is even sure any wrongdoing occurred, New England reasoned, other than to generate another news cycle of bad headlines and analysis against the Patriots?

And while there may be "video," what does the video show? If the video shows conclusively someone with the Pats doctoring the footballs, then there wouldn't be any need to "gauge if any wrongdoing occurred."

So it's probably inconclusive. (ProFootballTalk later reported that it showed someone bringing a bag of footballs into a bathroom for 90 seconds.)

New England has almost certainly seen any and all security video from Gillette Stadium that night, including whatever this is. Yet how the Pats keep pushing their chips further and further suggests they fear no smoking gun of guilt here. Robert Kraft doesn't say what he said without a level of confidence.

Even if you believe New England is guilty here, you can understand Kraft's rage at a league office that can't keep its business quiet, either directly to the media or to other teams who then spill it.

"[I expect an investigation that] would be in direct contrast to the public discourse which has been driven by media leaks as opposed to actual data and facts," Kraft said. "Because of this, many jumped to conclusions and made strong accusations against our coach, quarterback and staff, questioning the integrity of all involved ...

"I am disappointed in the way this entire matter has been handled and reported upon," Kraft said. "We expect hard facts as opposed to circumstantial leaked evidence to draw a conclusion of this investigation."

Perhaps Kraft, who vehemently defended Goodell in the wake of the Ray Rice scandal, has finally come to realize that the NFL central office can bungle even the simplest of tasks.

For Belichick, Brady and the Patriots, of course, the damage here is done. Even if the NFL winds up completely clearing the Patriots of wrongdoing, no serious evidence emerges and a reasonable explanation emerges, much of the public will still believe they are guilty. Fair or not, that's reality.

Some of that is self-inflicted due to the Spygate case of 2007. Some of it, which the Patriots are correct about, is how this story has played out, New England on the defensive day after day after day.

On Monday, Bob Kraft had enough, standing up for what he believes is the truth and calling out mismanagement that has caused one of the league's signature franchises to come under unprecedented and, if not unnecessary, then at least premature, fire.

"It bothers me greatly that [Brady's and Belichick's] reputations and integrity, and by association that of our team, has been called into question this past week," Kraft said.

Mr. NFL was furious with the NFL as the stakes rise and emotions out here in the desert push to a boil.