Are we sure Vince Wilfork didn't accidently sit on the balls?

The cover up would at this point be a much bigger black eye and embarrassment than the actual incident.

If someone eventually does freak out and confess, then Brady's legacy isn't going to be a bunch of super bowl appearances and wins, it's gonna be him standing up there at that press conference as King Liar McCheaty.

I agree.

And I doubt he is betting his legacy on a ball boy keeping his mouth shout. Unless he felt like he has nothing to lose by going that route.

Pretty sure their plan only extends as far as deny deny deny win SB. Then worry about what happens after.

Clearly Brady either was the reason they were underinflated or he at least knew about it. BB will always have plausible denyability unless someone comes out and says BB told me to... which i can't see ever happenning. They are obviously concerned that if he comes out admitting it then theres a 2% chance he might get suspended for the SB which they obviously don't deem worth risking. And its not like the league are gonna take the SB away from them if they win it.

Jesus this goes deep. I bet they'll find trace amounts of argon in there too

On this, I saw a segment with Greg Bedard who said he talked to a couple of offensive coaches from the NFL down at the Senior Bowl and they said they have never talked about or decided on a PSI to set the ball at.

So in that sense I believe BB when he says he has never talked about the PSI, but i do doubt that he had no knowledge about how the balls get treated pre-game and such.

They will probably find some Flubber in marshawn lynches gold cleats

From Belichick's statement:

"I obviously understand that each team has the opportunity to prepare the balls the way they want, give them to the officials and the game officials either approve or disapprove the balls. That really was the end of it for me until I learned a little bit more about this the last couple days."

That linked smart football article is really interesting.



Pats are obviously the Pot Ripper outlier.

So the Giants, that rush the ball more than the Patriots and fumble at the same rate of 1, should be looked at as cheaters too?
J'accuse, New Jersey Giants!

I think there are some problems with his methodology. New England lost the football once through running the ball this year, which is the same as the Giants (who run the ball more).
Brady didn't get sacked a whole lot during the 2014 season (and sacking is one of the most efficient routes to get fumbles as well), but he still fumbled 6 times (which is above average for the amount of sacks he took). Etc.

How many teams bench their starting running backs when they fumble?

Aaron Rodgers likes over-inflated balls. Maybe since they play and practice with them all the time, his receivers get used to them, but the defense doesn't. Hey Aaron Rodgers has a historically low interception rate.

It's quite probable that Coughlin and Belichick are really obsessed with not fumbling the ball as they understand how costly it is. Belichick has sat Ridley multiple times for entire games for fumbling. What's another .5 YPA if the guy fumbles twice as often? A guy like Ben Watson was a weapon of last resort during his time with the Patriots due to the perception of being a guy that will cough up the ball.

Not fumbling leads to running more plays so they aren't 2 independent and uncorrelated variables but Im about a decade too far away from my stats classes to know how much that matters or how to adjust for it. The numerical conclusion isn't quite right because that's assuming each play is equally likely to have a fumble, which for sure isn't correct and ignores the idea that some players fumble more than others for one thing. Pats have clearly been the turnover outlier over the last decade, but that chart isn't Absolute Poker/Potripper

Pretty GOATISH or sick luckbox if they got this by just inflating below the min and just no one noticing

NYG example is a really bad example because despite putting only one on the ground this year, they are in the curve for the 5 year sample.

Id be interested to see if a test of fumble rates for players that played for the Pats and then didn't play for the Pats showed a significant difference.

That test would have its own problems, but reduces one of the biggest problems with the first analysis i.e. different players don't have the same fumble rates (like its not surprising Brady/Pats and Manning/Colts make up the leaderboard on that chart).

His conclusion is probably right, I doubt the Pats fumble less than the league due to chance, but I sort of thought that was a given. Its far from a smoking gun about deflated balls, way too many other variables in play, and is using some GIGO math so I don't find the article super compelling.

BJGE fumbled 0 times for the Pats in 510 carries, and 5 times in 498 with the Bengals.

Who else was there? Blount fumbled 7 times in 491 carries non Patriot, and 3 out of 213 as a Patriot, but I imagine he faced better conditions in Tampa than he did in NE.

Not saying it is a smoking gun for deflated balls, but it is a large difference that is not explainable by "benching people for fumbling". Can it be explained by preparation and variance? I dunno, not that smart.

Outlier: a data point more than 1.5 x the interquartile range above the 3rd quartile or below the 1st quartile.

It appears that the 1st quartile is 105.5 (halfway between data point 5 and data point 6 of the 23 data points) and the 3rd quartile is 122 (again, halfway between data point 19 and data point 18) for the 23 data points, providing an IQR or 16.5. So IQR times 1.5 = 24.75, meaning an outlier would need to be above 146.75 or below 80.75. Unless my math is wrong.

Don't mean to be a jerk by quibbling, but true outliers like Potripper have to be a bit more extreme in comparison to other data points.

So the difference between the worst team and an average team is roughly the same between the Patriots and second place.

Not really that shocking considering the Patriots preparation and BB's intense hatred of fumbling the ball.

Another way to explain this is that the longer BB was the coach of the Patriots, the better they got at not fumbling the ball.

Seems like a pretty great data analysis to show how much better BB is than every other coach.

I'm looking at the orange graph, as plays per fumble is a lot more relevant than total fumbles. Whether or not that is an "outlier" I guess I don't know.

Yea overall these "outliers" are not even close to as extreme as the author is making them look.

Obviously it can be explained by variance, the people you mention. 0 occurrences in ~500 carries vs 5 times in ~500 carries is very insignificant.

I think there's obviously differences in the NFL with regards to practicing ball security as well. Bill has always said he puts an undue emphasis on limiting turnovers, not just by benching people with ball security issues, but by making them practice over and over and over. Ridley said as much when he was benched for fumbling. They even told him to handle a ball properly (lol?) on the sidelines while he was benched.

Can that explain the difference? I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me much.

An easy way to visualize the level of outlier would be to start the Y axis at 0 fumbles.

Wait by this math the plays/fumble is by definition an outlier, right?

5th and 6th data point = 42.
18th and 19th data point = 51.5
IQR of 9.5 * 1.5 = 14.25.
So outlier would need to be over 65.75, and Pats are coming in at 73?

I could have done that wrong as I've never done it before, just following your formula.

If they were doing it for that long. Surely it would have come up before from players moving teams etc. Or someone like wes welker going, hmmm, why is this ball really firm when he goes to denver... Just doesn't seem likely that they wouldn't get caught for so long.