I am honestly surprised you’ve heard the term “cherry picking” before. You’re the one who linked this, which is what you find when you look up “cherry picking” on wikipedia.
Your irrational woo arguments are embarrassing.
Well, just to have some fun messing around with the numbers: Advanced Football Analytics has an article with the plays per fumble stats for the last five years, including playoffs. New England is third, behind Atlanta and New Orleans. Looking at the numbers, an obvious point is that these three teams appear to be awesome, as they are completely separated above the rest of the league. The Slate article says to eliminate the dome teams, and never mentions them again, leaving NE as the only awesome team. But rather than ignoring the dome teams, let’s look at them just like the outdoor teams:
Average of non-awesome dome teams: 51.9 plays per fumble
Average of non-awesome outdoor teams: 49.0 plays per fumble
Atlanta: 60.1% better than non-awesome dome teams
New England: 59.3% better than non-awesome outdoor teams
New Orleans: 54.3% better than non-awesome dome teams
Hmm. Stats are fun. Although it’s possible that this analysis is not very rigorous!
Also it seems an explanation is necessary for Washington, as they have been consistently very non-awesome over this period. For example, maybe it’s possible that a team could simply be bad at ball security, although that would seem to suggest that teams might be good at it as well.
Well, you’d have to correct for who they play. For example, playing in the NFC North where the Bears were stealing the football like crazy for Marinelli would make fumbling more frequent than playing in a division where they don’t play good defense.
As for the Redskins, if you don’t have good players, you’re going to be more prone to turning the ball over.
Agreed.
Actually, the Globe reporter who wrote that piece wrote a second story two days later in which he writes
"Did Anderson actually check all only 36 footballs — 12 from the Colts and 24 from the Patriots — with a pressure gauge? Or did he give the balls the old squeeze test and put them in play?
Crickets, so far, from the NFL."
So no official confirmation yet from the NFL that the balls were actually measured with a gauge before the game. Please also note the the NFL’s official statement about all of this says:
“Prior to the game, the game officials inspect the footballs to be used by each team and confirm that this standard is satisfied, which was done before last Sunday’s game.”
An interesting lack of any mention of the use of any gauge, in a statement that I am sure was vetted by several lawyers and PR experts before release.
Finally, regarding the fumble issue - Bill don’t like fumbles. Running back Stevan Ridley, then the team’s leading rusher, was benched last season for fumbling.
Great! You can have your high school science teacher turned TV entertainer and ill go with, you know, real live functioning physicists
So now that multiple reports are coming in that it turns out the footballs were actually all around 1 psi under, well, if that’s the case then it turns out that good old pure simple physics is the only necessary explanation after all
That report cites back to Mike Florio, who was the first and only source so fat for this claim.
Sometimes Mike Florio is right. Sometimes he reports that Terry Bradshaw was killed in a car accident.
Keep hope alive!
You’re right that so far this is only one report.
But do you have any more instances of Mike Florio being egregiously wrong other than a single instance eight years ago (which he based on other media reports) that was corrected in less than ten minutes?
For myself, while I enjoy speculating various scenarios online, I’m perfectly content to wait for some actual evidence before I leap to any conclusions.
So I get that the NFL probably wants to get whatever punishment they hand out right with respect to fairness but as far as the facts are concerned, we don’t need to, at this moment, know if they were underinflated on purpose or not. Just the fact that they were and gave the Pats an advantage seems enough for the NFL to punish them right now. If not for tampering, then at least for gross negligence of equipment and failing to take proper precautions or something like that.
They don’t have to make any statement yet on the malicious purposefulness of the ball tampering right now but they have enough to say simply “The balls were bad, NE should have known, they were negligent” and punish them accordingly. But I agree with Richard Sherman, they probably won’t be punished at all, or just have a slap on the wrist because they can’t conclusively prove anything.
I disagree. The way the rules were written, the Patriots (or any team playing a cold-weather game) could follow the rules to the letter and still have underinflated balls, intentionally or otherwise. The league can’t punish a team for following the rules to the letter.
Well, no, let me revise that: the league shouldn’t punish a team for following the rules to the letter. They somehow got away with punishing Washington and Dallas for overpaying their teams when there was no salary cap, so they obviously can do it. It’s a bad idea, though.
(Bolding mine)
What advantage would that be? They played pretty mediocre in the first half, which is when the balls were underinflated. They were reinflated during half time, after which the Patriots played much better.
If it’s true that only one ball (the one that was intercepted) was two pounds under and the others were only one pound under, it is pretty easy to imagine a scenario in which the Patriots inflated to 12.5psi, which is what Brady says he likes, the balls lost pressure due to the temperature difference–something that nobody has thought too much about because nobody is that concerned with it–and one ball was slightly leaky which caused it to lose another pound of pressure, which caused Brady to underthrow. Which means any negligence would have actually been a disadvantage to the Patriots.
Of course, I’m just making things up, because we still don’t really know anything. It’s pretty poor policy to start handing out discipline based on speculation.
There is no rule against playing with a ball that does not meet the specifications; the rules only state the balls must pass inspection and must not be tampered with after the inspection. If the pressure changes after the inspection because of conditions outside of the control of the Patriots then there is no rule violation.
You seem uncharacteristically and excessively attached to this particular viewpoint.
Why? What’s it to you? I hate the Pats but am willing to give them the benefit of a doubt…
Actually, yes they do. If they prepared the balls according to spec, and the weather and atmospheric conditions caused the change, then there is no justification for a punishment. The teams are not required in any way to continue to monitor the balls after they are certified by the refs.
*According to Mike Florio over at Pro Football Talk, the ball intercepted by Indy linebacker D’Qwell Jackson in the second quarter of the AFC Championship Game was later measured at 10.5 PSI, which is 2.0 PSI under the legal minimum. However, a source told Florio, 10 other footballs – which were reportedly also about 2.0 PSI under the legal range – may have actually been closer to 11.5 PSI.
The new information contradicts the report from ESPN earlier this week that said 11 of 12 Patriots footballs measured in at about 2.0 PSI below the 12.5 PSI legal minimum. PFT’s report says that perhaps just one football fell in that range.*
Who is this unnamed “source” that Florio is referring to? Is he/she a reliable source? Are they close to the investigation, or did “someone on the internet” sent Florio a tweet?
All I know is that the NFL game balls are supposed to be between 13.5 and 12.5 psi. When tested, only one of the 12 balls supplied by the Patriots were within league spec at halftime. All of the Colts game balls were within league limits. The intercepted ball was 10.5 psi and other 10 Colt balls were also reported to be 2 pounds light.
I’ve tossed a few footballs around in my time, and I can feel the difference between a 13 psi ball and a 10.5 psi ball. It’s my personal opinion that Brady must have known that the balls were underinflated. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Belichick would have been in on DeflateGate.
For the what feels like 100th time,
-
Any football, inflated and tested in a room temperature training room, WILL, by halftime, in an environment 30 degrees colder, be approximately 1 psi less than when it was tested. This is a scientific fact.
-
Why weren’t the Colts balls under? Well, firstly, that has not been confirmed, and even if it is confirmed, then
a) maybe luck, like Aaron Rodgers, prefers inflation over 13?
b) maybe they were tested AFTER the patriots, and sat in a warm room,which would bring their pressure back to standard?
The only scenario where there are additional questions that would* need* to be answered is if the Patriots football’s tested greater than 1.5 psi below the 12.5 minimum standard.
There is no confirmed report on what the Patriots footballs actually tested at.
There is only an initial report that they were all 2 under, and there is a newer report that it was closer to 1 under.
If the footballs tested at 11 psi or less, then there are several plausible explanations to account for the additional 1 psi discrepancy, including but not at all limited to, manually releasing air from each ball after inspection.
Bottom line, if the balls tested between 11 and 12.5 psi, there is zero reason to suspect any cheating. At all. Physics accounts for it. And anything within .5 psi falls within reasonable margin of error in a far from precise system.
If the balls tested below 11, we need to wait for more actual confirmed facts, about a lot of things, before any conclusion can be made that cheating would be the most likely scenario, let alone actually provable.
add to all of the above the fact that Belichick and Brady put all their chips on the table. That’s a bold move if they have something to hide. They didn’t have to do that and its a huge risk, if someone, anyone out there can prove them wrong. Possible they’re lying and took that risk? sure. But they are both smart men. I just don’t think so.
NFL News, Scores, Standings & Stats | FOX Sports
NFL focusing on locker room attendant as key person of interest.
Perhaps he was taking them to the sauna? Or science-sounding reasons? Or Aaron Rodgers?
Keep hope alive Bootis!
Neil deGrasse Tyson Debunks Belichick’s DeflateGate Science:
"For the Patriots to blame a change in temperature for 15% lower-pressures, requires balls to be inflated with 125-degree air."
[Bootis mode]That’s just a science teacher turned TV entertainer! [/Bootis mode]
Actually bootis mode is more like: com