Patriots get out of town ahead of Blizzard

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) -- The New England Patriots should be on their way to the Super Bowl in Arizona before a major snowstorm arrives.

The team plans to leave Logan Airport in Boston at 12:30 p.m. on Monday after a City Hall rally scheduled for 11 a.m. Light snow is expected at mid-day before intensifying at night.

On their way to the airport, team owner Robert Kraft, president Jonathan Kraft and coach Bill Belichick are expected to speak at the rally. Players Tom Brady, Dan Connolly, Vince Wilfork, Devin McCourty and Matthew Slater are to do so as well.

Then they'll join the rest of the team for the flight to Glendale, Arizona, for the game against the Seattle Seahawks on Feb. 1.

The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for eastern and southeastern Massachusetts and all of Rhode Island for from 7 p.m. Monday to 1 a.m. Wednesday.

As for Deflate Gate - Brady spoke out again on Sunday night. No. 12 reiterated during a Pro-Bowl halftime interview that he still hasn't spoken to the NFL.  "I believe they're going to do that after the season, so we'll deal with it after this game,” Brady said.

Coach Bill Belichick also spoke out over the weekend. He held a surprise news conference Saturday saying his team "followed every rule to the letter." The New England Patriots coach described in detail 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.

"At no time was there any intent whatsoever to try to compromise the integrity of the game or to gain an advantage," Belichick said in an unscheduled availability on Saturday afternoon, eight days before the Patriots will play the Seattle Seahawks for the NFL championship.

"Quite the opposite: we feel like we followed the rules of the game to the letter," he said. "We try to do everything right. We err on the side of caution. It's been that way now for many years. Anything that's close, we stay as far away from the line as we can."

Speaking once again with authority on a topic he previously professed ignorance of, Belichick said the team conducted an internal study on the process of getting game balls ready.

Most of the steps are designed to make them tackier, which has a noticeable effect on how it feels, he said, but the process could also affect the pressure inside the ball, which is harder to tell by touch.

"I'm not a scientist. I'm not an expert in footballs; I'm not an expert in football measurements," Belichick said. "I'm just telling you what I know."

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 game on Sunday. But later that night, Indianapolis TV station WTHR reported that some of the game balls provided by New England for the use of its offense weren't sufficiently inflated

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