PHOENIX — He is wearing a Charvet tie and custom Nike Air Force 1 sneakers, but Patriots owner Robert Kraft has to be uncomfortable watching his franchise and his league engage in a game of chicken with their reputations over deflated footballs.
Either Kraft’s team or his compliant commissioner, Roger Goodell, is going to take another legacy body blow with the NFL’s investigation into how the Patriots played the first half of the AFC Championship game with underinflated footballs..
The brand Kraft has so carefully constructed since he swooped in like a guardian angel to keep NFL football in New England in 1994 is pitted against the commissioner he has easy access to and heavy influence over on the game’s biggest stage.
There can be only one winning side in Deflategate and Kraft loses something either way.
Kraft has chosen a side to back, and it’s the guys he pays for out of his pocket, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, not the commissioner who is in his pocket.
Kraft came out swinging at the league Monday, when the Patriots arrived in Arizona for Super Bowl XLIX. The grand poobah of Patriot Place said he unconditionally believes the Patriots did nothing wrong, and that if the league can’t prove tampering with the balls it owes the Patriots an apology.
He didn’t back down Tuesday, 15 years to the day that he hired Belichick. Kraft was asked what his employees’ reaction was to his declaration of innocence.
“To be honest by and large, except for our quarterback, they’re not paying much attention to it,” said Kraft. “I think they think it’s a bunch of hogwash. I think Bill does a good job of telling them what to focus on. I’ve gotten a lot of positive comments from them. But I just said what I believe.”
Kraft’s tune has changed in the arid Arizona air. He was supportive of the league’s investigation in a prepared statement last Friday that included nary a claim of the team’s innocence. That was before Belichick’s presented his scientific football findings, which did not include an explanation for the Colts’ footballs.
It would seem the Patriots and the NFL are locked in a micturition match.
That’s fitting, considering the crux of the NFL’s evidence is video of a ball attendant taking footballs with him into a Gillette Stadium bathroom for 90 seconds, according to reports by Fox Sports and Pro Football Talk.
Kraft’s defiant stance on Deflategate has to have Goodell quaking in his loafers.
At Super Bowl Media Day, a panoply of frivolity and self-aggrandizement, Kraft was asked whether he had spoken with his good pal, commissioner Goodell, about the investigation.
In brevity worthy of Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch, he replied, “No.”
Maybe, it was an innocuous answer, or maybe it was Goodell’s Fredo moment from Foxborough.
Of all of Goodell’s losses this season, losing the imprimatur of Kraft would be the worst.
Whatever the pressure was in the deflated footballs, there is greater pressure on the league to get the Deflategate inquiry right.
Goodell needs a faith-restoring win on this investigation in the worst way.
It’s been an Oakland Raiders-esque season for the commissioner with public scrutiny from the league’s handling — or mishandling — of the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson domestic violence cases.
The last time such capricious and arbitrary punishment was handed out was during the French Revolution.
In Goodell’s darkest hour, after TMZ released the video of Rice punching his now wife Janay in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino nobody jumped to Goodell’s defense faster than Kraft.
Kraft defended Goodell on “CBS This Morning,” backing up the commissioner’s claim that he never saw the video in initially issuing Rice a two-game ban.
According to a GQ story, Kraft also arranged through fellow Master of the Universe CBS president Les Moonves to have Goodell do a sit-down interview that evening on the “CBS Evening News.”
Kraft is one of the more powerful owners in the league, with influence in league labor matters and his fingerprints all over the golden goose of NFL television right fees.
When he calls over to NFL headquarters at 345 Park Ave., Goodell picks up the phone. The GQ piece quoted a veteran NFL executive referring to Kraft as the “assistant commissioner” because he has so much sway with Goodell.
You tend to do that when someone helped get you the job.
Along with the Rooneys, owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Mara family, co-owners of the New York Giants, Kraft politicked fellow owners to get Goodell the two-thirds majority he needed to succeed Paul Tagliabue as NFL commissioner in August of 2006.
Ever since then there has been a perception in some league circles that the Patriots are one of the NFL’s favored sons, given a pat on the back when other teams get a dress shoe in the derriere.
Seahawks corner Richard Sherman said Sunday that the Patriots won’t get punished because Kraft and Goodell are close, citing photos of Goodell at Kraft’s home for an AFC Championship game party.
Kraft fired back at Sherman at Media Day.
“Well, I think Richard Sherman is a very smart marketing whiz,” said Kraft, before explaining that the league stopped paying for an AFC Championship game party a few years ago, so he holds one at his house for corporate sponsors if the game is at Gillette Stadium.
Kraft then talked about how money from corporate sponsors is shared with the players.
“He didn’t go to Harvard, but Stanford must be pretty good because he figured it out,” said Kraft.
Ok, so Kraft isn’t exactly the Henry Clay of trash talk. But he gets his message across.
He has done that here at Super Bowl XLIX.
Deflategate is a winner-take-all, high-stakes reputation and legacy poker game between the Patriots and Goodell.
Kraft already has chosen a winner.
Christopher L. Gasper can be reached at cgasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.