Chris Mortensen: “Krafts Apologized to me.” Patriots: “Nope”
“Mort only pawn in game of life.”
Oft-misinformed ESPN insider Chris Mortensen was a guest on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM yesterday, and spoke at length about his work on the DeflateGate/Ballghazi situation that is currently costing taxpayers money in federal court. File under “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.
At one point during the show, Mortensen said that Patriots owner Robert Kraft and team president Jonathan Kraft had, individually, told him that they were sorry for “how things have gone down”.
No, really: Mort is saying the owner and president of the team that he effectively accused of cheating with a report that was proven to be wrong with the release of the Wells report and has kept the Patriots and Tom Brady in the news since February called him to apologize for what’s been happening.
One tiny problem: the two guys who Mortensen is saying apologized to him almost immediately refuted Mortensen’s story, telling WEEI’s Dennis & Callahan show they said no such thing:
(Nice profile pic, by the way, D&C. I bet one of those guys is a double-dipper.)
After digging himself into that hole, Mortensen talked some more about how he originally got the information about the Patriots footballs, and it went pretty much as well as your friend who’s had 38 shots and keeps saying “double or nothing!” in beer pong:
“That whole narrative that somebody from the league deliberately leaked false information to me is so much baloney. It’s actually insulting, because I made the inquiry.”
What, exactly, is this supposed to clarify? Mortensen has already said that he “should have done a better job vetting” his sources. So either this is him doubling down on the fact that he F’d up in a major way and refused to correct his own work until a couple weeks ago, or throwing the league under the bus because he asked them for information and they gave him info that was as reliable as Taylor Swift telling you she’s emotionally stable.
And for the coup de grâce, Mortensen made sure everyone knew that he “…never implicated Tom Brady”.
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Does implicating that the team Brady happens to be the most prominent player for is engaging in pearl-clutching scandalous behavior that would make the cast of House of Cards gasp mean that you totally didn’t mean to imply that Brady was doing something wrong? Guess so, in Mort-world.
A lot of publications like Pro Football Talk are adding the caveat that Mort “is in a tough spot” because he can’t give up his sources, but screw that. Guys like Adam Schefter and Ian Rappaport issue corrections to their own reports all the time, including when they’re lied to by the NFL.
This freakin’ guy…