Jarvis Landry Celebrates Touchdown Vs. Patriots By Deflating Football
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- You know, it's been a long, long time since the people of New England have been able to add a name to the list of "DeflateGate" offenders. Jarvis Landry may have broken the streak.
After scoring a touchdown -- what proved to be the game-winning points on Monday night -- Landry appeared to deliver CPR to a football in distress. But according to his own explanation, Landry was deflating the football.
Jarvis Landry TD celebration pic.twitter.com/b0fuih8wjL
— Steve Noah (@Steve_OS) December 12, 2017
According to the Miami Herald, when asked to explain his celebration, Landry said, "I'm taking the air out the ball! I'm deflating it!"
In New England, that's enough to get more than a few people to start twitching.
HOWEVER, Landry smartly has an out in this case, as the song "MotorSport" by Migos, Nikki Minaj and Cardi B (Full disclosure: I don't know who that is) includes these lyrics, via Genius.com:
Face all your fears, then get at me
Hit so many donuts on them backstreets
Sit so high in the nosebleeds (yeah)
Feel like I can fly, yeah
Xans, Perky, check (yeah), Bill Belichick
Take the air out the ball, just so I can flex
That right there? Plausible deniability. However, it's worth noting that Landry said he was "deflating it," while "MotorSport" includes zero uses of the words "deflate," "deflating" or "deflated." (How about Bill Belichick getting the name-check, though? Pretty hip for a 65-year-old Wesleyan grad.)
Whatever the case -- whether Landry was taking a "DeflateGate" shot or just living out his Migos fantasies on national TV -- it's been clear that Landry has been inspired when playing the Patriots this year. He caught eight passes for 70 yards in Miami's loss in Foxboro in Week 12, and he was feisty, getting in the face of a number of Patriots defensive backs.
"I respect the Patriots organization and their players," Landry said after that loss three weeks ago, "but there is something for this team and for this organization to create a mind-set. That we're nobody's little brother and we are here to play. On any given Sunday anybody can beat anybody."
On Monday night, in the Dolphins' 27-20 win, he caught eight passes for 46 yards and two touchdowns. And interestingly enough, on the one-year anniversary of the NFL proving that "DeflateGate" was nothing more than a massive overreaction to a basic scientific phenomenon.
But he also got himself on the DeflateGate Watch List. He'll need to go six months without mentioning deflation or air in footballs in order to be officially expunged from the long list that includes Mark Brunell, Jerry Rice, and of course, Roger Goodell.