The New England Patriots are good at winning football games.

They are also good at not answering questions.

Very good, in fact.

Only Marshawn Lynch may be better.

Now, the Pats are again accused of doing something else better than any other team in the National Football League.

Cheating.

It’s hard to argue, unless to you are indignant Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft, Patriots’ head football coach, head hoodie wearer and question deflector Bill Belichick, Patriots’ quarterback and cell phone destroyer Tom Brady or a hot-blooded Patriots’ fan.

If you are a Patriots, apostrophe-anything, you have a serious persecution complex these days.

Over footballs.

Deflated footballs.

It’s preposterous, really, that this issue has blown up into the Watergate it has become.

Did Tom Brady, “the deflator” and his buddy really need to drain the air out of the AFC Championship footballs?

No.

Did the doctored footballs have anything to do with the Patriots drubbing the Colts, 52-7, in the AFC title game?

No.

Did Tom Brady knowingly instruct equipment personnel to doctor the footballs?

Absolutely.

And that is the point.

Brady skirted the rules.

Broke them. Denied he broke them.

Destroyed evidence.

Pretty much did everything he could to make himself look guilty.

In the 101 Ways to Look Guilty handbook, he checked off about 99 boxes.

Had he stepped to the podium in January and said, “Yeah, my bad. I told the dude to take a little air out of the footballs. Maybe they were below the legal range of air pressure. If so, it’s on me. Won’t do it again. By the way, like my hat?” this issue would have been over.

Mostly forgotten by now.

Brady would have been scolded by Goodell and probably would have been fined, but most likely little else would have come of it.

It wouldn’t have grown into the monster it has become in light of Brady’s failed appeal of his four-game suspension, which was handed out in part because of his “Ah, shucks; who, me?” act.

And because of his penchant for destroying his cell phones.

Now Brady, the Patriots and the NFL are in for a long legal battle. It’s not a stretch to believe “Deflategate” could last longer than the gate of all gates: Watergate.

That’s bad for the NFL. It’s bad for all fans, not just the us-against-the-world Pats’ followers.

It takes attention away from other stories.

And it makes Belichick have to repeat himself.

Over and over and over again.

“We’re on to the Foxborough ... for training camp.”

Except we can’t move on.

Eight months later, we’re still talking about deflated footballs.

Boring.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.