(Lead-off quote) "...and I'll tell you, Felger and Mazz should be the first ones I should call, because I would love - just LOVE - to combat the idiocy of those two." -- Matt Light last night
- Talking about Charlie Weis stories: "He would go into the food line, and the bacon would be out, and remember the bread that was underneath the bacon to soak up the fat? Charlie would take the bread, and make a bacon sandwich with it, with the eggs."
Q (Bertrand): "We've been doing this 4 hours a day for 2 weeks, other callers, other stations... you get numb to this thing. You've been digesting this thing since the beginning of it. What's the biggest problem you have with all of this?"
A (Light): "...My overall take on this is, if you get led down a path by a group like the media... the media was force-fed the only thing they could possibly digest, and that was directed and orchestrated by the guy that should have been thinking about what was in the best interests of the NFL. If Roger Goodell had been doing any number of things at the very beginning of this, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
So, we can talk about a lot of different things that led up to this, but first you have to go back to Day 1, and look at it from a different perspective. If I was anybody else and had no knowledge of what happened within the organization, didn't know any of the people that had been called into question, didn't know their integrity, their character, what they stand for, what they've done - if I didn't know any of those things, I would probably look at it through their same set of eyes."
Q (Zolak): "Do you think the air in the football is important? 12.5, 11.5, whatever that number may be?"
A: "You know what's crazy? I had never, in my life, ever before thought about it. Now Zo, you used to get them ready -"
(Zolak): "I was a QB for 8 years. I've never stuck a gauge in, though the rule changed in 06-07 when Tommy & Peyton petitioned the league to be able to prep their own footballs. But everybody would do something different, because no two hands are alike, every football is different. People keep thinking it's the squishability, the hardness of the football, but what's more important is the strings on the football, we'd throw some out just on the strings alone. I never knew about PSI until this past January.?
A: "Imagine what a golfer does, have you ever heard a golfer get into their inside mind, what they do to their balls? The prep is complicated. It's absurd to get into the pressurization of a pigskin, it had never been brought up in my mind. But it has to be important, right, because they have rules about where that pressure has to fall. So to answer your question, yeah, I think it is important. But Zo - you know, a guy like Tommy at that level, think of how much attention is put into that prep. I mean, he's NUTS about that."
(Zolak): "I call him type-A. Being around him, everything's gotta be his way. The word he uses when he says 'I approve the balls, they're perfect'. He's got them exactly the way he wants them."
(Light): "Exactly. Talk to a Dan Connolly, Dan Koppen, Ryan Wendell... when he had to go out there and do 4 million snaps, and Bill's squirting water on the ball, he's got to get everything just perfect. Their hands are on the ball."
(Bertrand): "Here's a quote from Tedy Bruschi and Damien Woody...."
(Tedy Bruschi, via tape): "This is what I believe: Tom Brady would not tell anyone to do anything illegal. I know Tom Brady, I know his integrity, I'd vouch for his integrity up and down. He would not ever tell anyone, to implicate themselves or do something illegally, that would circumvent the rules of competitive play. That's who he is, that's what I believe."
(Woody apparently disagrees with Bruschi)
Q (Zolak): "...but you don't believe Tom had anything to do with this?"
A (Light): "There's no doubt in my mind, none whatsoever, that Tom is 100% innocent of anything that's been talked about. The guy wouldn't do that! He puts so much into everything that he does, it's been done at an exceptional level from day 1 with him. If you're going to call someone's character and integrity into question, what do you base it on?"
Q (Bertrand): "You go back to Spygate, now there's people sitting around who think -you're- a cheater, because you were there during that era. What's your response to that, and how much could videotaping another team's signals help you during a football game?"
A (Light): "I don't know if there's anything else that people hang their hat on, but to me, the Spygate thing feels like the #1 thing people hang their hat on. If people talk about New England and deflategate, they say 'well, it's very apparent they have a history of this based on Spygate'. There's several things you understand happen with an organization when you're a player, and there are some things you NEVER hear about. And I had NEVER heard about the filming of an opponent's sideline when I was a player. What I heard, I heard from Bill when he addressed the team, I heard 'here's what we're going to be going through, here's exactly what happened, here's where the problem lies', and the one takeaway I had was, 'we do everything we can, we study every single opponent, we study their tendencies, and we do it by the book. Do we go right up to the line? You bet you do, that's why we're successful, because there's never a stone that doesn't get turned over.'
But to your point, Spygate, I look at it as this: it's not like you cheated on your wife. You may have sent a text to an old girlfriend, but you didn't cheat on your wife."
(Bertrand): "...But you were told, and there's a lot of people who think this Wells report was written the way it was, because you were told to stop and you didn't stop and it's happening again!"
(Zolak): "And there was no warning with this. Where's the harmonious job of the commissioner to go to the Patriots on Tuesday and say, 'hey, someone's bitching about you guys taking care of the footballs a certain way. Can you get to the bottom of it, Robert or Bill, and fix this, or we're going to send the memo again.' And they didn't, so it seems like this sting was set up."
(Light): "Roger Goodell came in from day 1 to come in and prove a point. Go back and look at Roger's first weeks as the commissioner, and his goal was to set that standard that when it comes to discipline and integrity, we are NOT going to compromise. So I would say this: aside from that I've got a lot of issues with how he's handled a lot of things, he comes from the camp of, 'let's make sure that the court of public opinion is what we consider FIRST' - he's worried about what other people are going to say, what the media and other owners are going to say - instead of, as every other leader I've seen in every organization, saying 'this is how we do business'. There's a very big difference in those two things, you're either a leader or you're not. I'll give you an example: I got fined for a fight with Channing Crowder."
(Bertrand): "That was an awesome fight. Took your helmet off and started swinging it."
(Light): "It was a great time. I really enjoyed it. Had a cast on my hand too. That moment happened, and was it good for the NFL? No. Was it something we want to have out there? No. But hey, I play the game of football so I don't go to jail when I fight people. I actually really enjoy it, and it's a violent sport. And cause the guy was an absolute idiot, and they had many chances to stop that situation way ahead of time."
(Zolak): "What do you mean by that?"
(Light): "Well, the guy was making references to a family member of mine, all game long. Now listen, I'm the guy if you ask anybody that - there's been articles written from the Super Bowl that I tried to talk trash to him all game long, it didn't work, I finally gave up. Now, I never say a word, mainly because I'm breathing too hard. Quarterbacks get a lot of things thrown at them from the linebackers and stuff, all game long. Linemen too. Now a defensive end, or a linebacker in this case, in Channing Crowder, was saying things that were so despicable, and so loudly, and for so long, and in at halftime too - and now, in Miami, both teams go into the same endzone, right? - the whole way in, and the Ref was between us. And the whole game, the Ref was there. And at a point in the NFL under Goodell's guidance where they weren't going to allow things to be said... at that point in the game, they could have done a bunch of things to just kill it. They chose not to. They got to a point in the game where he actually removed a guy on the extra point and took his place right over me, and you know as well as I do, Zo, that on an extra point it's literally just an opportunity to kill whoever's in front of you if you're a D-lineman. So as an offensive lineman, I take one step, and I get pummeled by not one or two but literally three guys, with another guy pushing behind him. I told my good buddy, my sidekick Russ Hochstein, 'bear down, buddy, it's about to get real.' And he gets pummeled, because I don't think he got the memo. And I scoot back and here's Crowder of course right there right in my face, and I pop his helmet off, we get it on, the thing happens.
Now, I get a call from Roger of course, and I get ejected - of course, that's how these things happen. When you get ejected and you put a stain on the game like that, you stop a game because you throw a helmet clear across the field because you're a little wound up, you're getting a call. And I told Roger, "Look, I don't need a big brother standing up for me. Your guys had their chance to make this right, they chose not to, and it ended up in that. So do what you gotta do, but - 'oh, what did he say?' - well, you ask THEM [the refs] what he said, I'm not going to go running to you.' When it's all said and done, he calls me and says 'It can go one of two ways. Either you call everybody and tell them what was said, how it all went down, or I fine you guys the same amount of money, basically saying that, if I don't fine you, they're going to have a field day with this in the media.' So again, he's not leading, he's worried about perception. And again, I wouldn't ever do that, I can handle my own situations. But thank you for the fine, Roger. I got 15, he got 15, and we called it a day."
Scott Zolak 
