As great as the Patriots are at football, they're even better at not answering questions.

Just look at this clinic they put on Wednesday. It started with Tom Brady hauling off on Facebook about how neither he nor the Patriots did anything wrong (which doesn't explain why they suspended "The Deflator" and his buddy) and how the league is out to get him (which makes no sense at all).

But then the Super Bowl champs took it up several notches, with a two-front assault on the concept of public accountability.

The owner went first, reading a prepared statement about just how wicked crushed he is by this whole thing, how awesome a guy Brady is, and how lawyers always mess everything up. "I was wrong to put my faith in the league," Robert Kraft said. "Personally, this is very sad and disappointing to me."

Heavy stuff. Somber stuff. Sad owner. Angry owner. Everything Patriots fans want in an owner at this terrible moment in which they and their beloved team are feeling so persecuted.

Then Bill Belichick took the podium and went Full Marshawn -- handling the issue in the exact opposite way from Kraft, saying absolutely nothing and pretending he didn't have an opinion on any of it.

"It's already been addressed," he said more than once, including in response to a reporter saying, "I just wondered what your opinion was." Belichick's opinion had not yet been addressed, but that doesn't matter. He wasn't there to answer questions. He was there to defy, to deflect, to be on-message, to make everyone feel bad for not asking about football.

Irascible coach. Focused coach. Everything Patriots fans love about their coach, who has delivered four Super Bowls and no apologies in 15 years. Belichick could emblazon a middle finger on his hoodie and rally six states to his side while telling the outside world its questions don't matter.

So they're covered, are the champs. They've publicly fought this thing with anger and with ambivalence, allowing those who buy their tickets and their jerseys a variety of avenues by which to join them in their public outrage. Strong PR work, no doubt.

What they haven't done, of course, is answer questions. Questions like, "If no one did anything wrong, why were the ballboys suspended?" or "If a player has nothing to hide, why wouldn't he cooperate fully with the investigation?"

But that doesn't matter, right? The Patriots just give the people what they want -- as long as we're talking about the people who'll take their side no matter what they do. The rest of us? We've already been addressed.