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If those moments, hours and days following the Patriots' improbable Super Bowl victory last week were any indication, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Patriots coaches, and players and fans won't soon forget commissioner Roger Goodell's role in the Deflategate silliness that ultimately led to Tom Brady missing the first month of the season.

It didn't matter, of course. The Patriots ended up where they have on four previous occasions this century: Hoisting the Lombardi Trophy. But the vitriol out of New England didn't go unnoticed. League executives were seething at the actions of the franchise, most notably defensive coordinator Matt Patricia sporting a Goodell-is-a-clown t-shirt when the team returned to Boston on Monday.

But surely the vitriol directed at the league -- and Goodell in particular -- would have subsided by Tuesday morning, as the Patriots' victory parade made its way through Boston.

Nope.

We mention all this because while the 2016 season is over, Deflategate still isn't officially behind us.

In addition to Brady's four-game suspension, the Patriots were also fined $1 million, and stripped of their 2016 first-round pick and their 2017 fourth-round pick, as the Boston Herald reminds us.

That's right, Deflategate lives on for a few more months. And while fourth-rounders don't typically yield NFL starters with the same frequency as the talent that teams find in the first round, the Patriots have had great success finding players in Round 4 that fit their system. Chief among them: Running back James White, who scored three touchdowns in the Super Bowl. Then there's rookie wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell, who had four touchdown catches in '16. And Trey Flowers, a fourth-rounder in 2015, who had 2.5 sacks in the Super Bowl. And those are the Pats' fourth-rounders in the last three years. Don't forget Shaq Mason, Cameron Fleming and Stephen Gostkowski before them.

Of course, at this point in the proceedings, you get the feeling that Goodell could strip the Patriots of 90 percent of the roster and Bill Belichick and Tom Brady would still find a way to win.