Bill Belichick: New England Patriots have "followed every rule to the letter"

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Saying his team "followed every rule to the letter," New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick explained how his team prepares its footballs on game day and defended his players from chatter that they made it to the Super Bowl by cheating.

In an unscheduled media availability on Saturday afternoon, eight days before the Patriots will play the Seattle Seahawks for the NFL title, Belichick described an internal study into how the footballs are prepared to quarterback Tom Brady's liking.

Most of the steps are designed to make them tackier for a better grip, he said, but the process could also affect the pressure inside the ball.

"There have been questions raised, and I believe now, 100 percent, that I have personally and we have as an organization have absolutely followed every rule to the letter," Belichick said. "At no time was there any intent to compromise the integrity of the game."

The Patriots reached the Super Bowl for the sixth time in Belichick's tenure when they beat the Colts 45-7 in the AFC championship on Sunday.

But later that night, Indianapolis TV station WTHR reported that some of the game balls provided by the Patriots for the use of their offense weren't sufficiently inflated.

In the slow news off-days before Super Bowl week, the allegations received disproportionate attention -- and Twitter hashtags such as #DeflateGate and #Ballghazi -- along with comparisons to the videotaping scandal of 2007, when the Patriots were hit with unprecedented penalties after Belichick was caught recording opposing coaches sending in signals from the sidelines.

Belichick denied that there is a pattern of rule-breaking, or even of pushing the rules to their limit.

"It was wrong. We were disciplined for it. That's it. We never did it again. We're never going to do it again," Belichick said of the scandal that came to be known as "Spygate." ''And anything else that's close, we're not going to do either."

The NFL has confirmed that it is investigating and the Patriots vowed to cooperate. Belichick said earlier in the week that he didn't know how the game balls were prepared, deferring to Brady. On Thursday, the quarterback also denied doing anything improper.

While Belichick insisted Saturday "I'm not a scientist," his explanations made him sound more like a science teacher than a football coach.

"The situation is, the preparation of the ball caused the ball to -- I would say -- be artificially high in PSI, when it was set to the regulation, regulated level," Belichick said. "And then it reached its equilibrium at some point later on, an hour or two, into the game, whatever it was, that that level was below what was set in this climactic condition. Think that's exactly what happened."

Those explanations still don't address why the Colts' game day footballs reportedly had no underinflation problems.

While Belichick said he welcomed the NFL's investigation, he also said Saturday's press availability about the footballs was "the end of this subject for me for a long time."

"I'm embarrassed to talk about the amount of time that I've had to put into this," he said.