Yeah, bummer
Its ok that the refs didn’t notice. As I understand it, the team provides its own balls due to a rule change ironically lobbied for by the Pats and other teams back in 2007. They have first crack at the balls, access to it most of the time, and have a higher probability of being able to tell if there is something wrong with them. The refs failed their jobs, but given the amount of time the Pats had them, I’d put part of the blame on them too.
It’s not difficult to grasp. But if you want to assume deliberate deflation of all 11 underinflated balls, you have to not only assume one mechanism for the 10.5psi ball, but a mechanism to discount the natural deflation of the 11.5psi balls. We’re still left with multiple mechanisms.
And it’s pretty easy to set it up with one mechanism. The Patriots inflated 10 balls to 12.5psi, 1 to 11.5, and one to 13.5. Maybe it was sloppiness, maybe it was an equipment problem, maybe it was a deliberate attempt to slip a ball past the inspection. The officials test them, and, being human, the one underinflated ball (out of 36, including the Colts balls and backup balls) slips by.
Absolutely. Which is why I pointed out that exact thing.
Also, while I’m a Patriots fan, I’m not sitting here in desperate need to “defend” them. I’m idly speculating based on the drips and dribbles of stuff we actually know. When (and if) more information comes out, we can speculate anew. If conclusive evidence comes to light of deliberate tampering, I’ll happily condemn them to the degree that I feel is warranted by the extent of wrongdoing. Because, you see, it’s just football. It affects my life not at all. In the meantime, all we really have is a bunch of vague, contradictory reports. There’s no need to poison the well by dismissing every argument as “cognitive dissonance” or “Patriots defenders”.
I don’t claim the Patriots are better than anyone else. You claim they are one a certain few douchey teams, and then preemptively dismiss any argument attempting show that most of the league in fact does things you determine make a team “douchey”.
I don’t care to try to change your mind, you can create your own formula and adjust it so the teams you dislike are the ‘certain douchey ones’- maybe if a team does 10 things that you find douchey, they make the list, but a team that only does 9 doesn’t. Maybe they have to have been caught? Maybe they need to have an infraction that the media saw fit to spotlight? I don’t know what your criteria is. But as irritating as you find Patriots fans pointing out examples of other teams’ wrong doings as a defense to the bandwagon claim that the Patriots are the dirty team, believe me, people who sit on a high horse throwing around arbitrary standards of integrity as see fit are far more annoying.
Sure. If you assume that the balls started at varying levels, they can end up at varying levels.
Doesn’t sound especially plausible, but at least you’re getting around the need for three different mechanisms.
Now all you need is the physics explanation and the refs failing to do the check they are required to do.
Before you make such a confident statement, you should make sure you haven’t ruled out unknown variables. They always seem to turn up when you least expect them
http://mmqb.si.com/2015/01/27/nfl-deflategate-investigation-patriots/
[QUOTE=Peter King]
" A second factor, the expansion of a football as it gets wet, also leads to a drop in psi. This factor contributes another 0.7 psi in pressure drop
[/QUOTE]
Remember, it was an awfully rainy night. I remember it coming down in buckets. Some balls would have been on the field longer than others. Some probably never got used or wet. Looks like any additional +/- .5 psi difference can be explained by physics. Or is that just a mechanism?
If we take it as a given that the balls ended up at varying levels (which, I hasten to point out again, is hardly conclusively proven) and take it as a given that every ball is going to lose about a pound of pressure (varying slightly based on the starting pressure), we have no choice to conclude that the balls started out at varying pressures.
The ball that tested at 12.5 had to start out at 13.5. The balls that tested at 11.5 had to start at 12.5. The ball that tested at 10.5 had to start at 11.5.
Which leaves us with one illegal ball, not 11. Maybe the guy who brought the balls into the bathroom did indeed deflate that ball. Which is the one that Brady, perhaps expecting a more inflated ball, threw for a pick. Oops.
As I have posted above, there is still no proof from the NFL that the refs did do the pre-game check correctly.
I guess we’ll just have to disagree. I am a Pats fan but I can’t see complaining about any other team in the same situation. Once the balls are certified by the refs at the beginning of the game I don’t think the teams are under any obligation to do anything.
My problem, not that it was asked, is not so much that the Pats are douchey and other teams are douchey too. My problem is that pretty much every single team outside of the Patriots says they are overly douchey amongst their peers.
It’s not a fan perception, as say, a fan of the Giants and fuck everything Boston. I used to root for the Pats, made a ton of money betting on them. It’s what other teams and players from every other organization are saying about the way the Patriot organization is run from a peer standpoint.
There seems to be an acceptable amount of douchieness amongst the league players, coaches and executives; but, the Patriots continually go above and beyond that sort of “gentleman’s agreement”, if you will, over and over, many times unnecessarily. You hear that about he Lions as well, in a different way with Suh and Raiola. That, to me, is what seperates them from the rest of the league.
That’s a perfectly reasonable opinion. Does this attitude exist among players who used to play for them? Players who were released? The Patriots are known for having for releasing players on a dime- as far as player loyalty, its all business. This would lead to some pretty disgruntled players. Are former Patriots on the record, after first hand experiencing the organization from the inside, confirming this attitude? I actually don’t have any idea if so, I have only heard great respect from former Patriots towards Belechick and the organization, even after not necessarily amiable splits. Many former Patriots who are by all accounts respected across the league for their sincerity and integrity have nothing but praise for the Patriots and Belichick. I guess a few instances of former players saying they didn’t like what went on there would make make your argument carry more weight for me- and again I’m not claiming there aren’t any, I’ve just never seen it.
I’m less annoyed with those who simply think the Patriots are duchey, than with those who use spygate to make a claim that they are are some kind of perpetually cheating, rule breaking franchise. Someone can choose to hate the patriots because they broke a rule, thats fine. He can also choose to not apply that same moral standard to other teams who have broken a rule- sure, why not. But saying things like “time and again”, “over and over” “constantly cheating” is simply a lie, and a weasley attempt to push into the public conscious an agenda, just because they hate a team. But hey, if the Patriots are actually guilty of deflating footballs, then there’s finally 2, and they’ll actually be able to say those things and not be lying, and this will forever forward be moot.
Also, any team that has ever played in frigid weather, single digit temperatures are, by laws of physics, playing with non compliant footballs- sometimes probably down under 10psi. I wonder if they are turning them in to get pumped back up? should they share blame for not doing that? Or, maybe until last week nobody has ever given a shit about a football slightly out of an arbitrary psi range thrown in the rulebook 70 years ago when footballs looked like rugby balls, let alone who should share blame for such an insult to the rules.
ah Hentor
See #245 above. The early balls filled would be cooler, saw this filling bike tires. They would not lose as much pressure when chilled.
ah Hentor
See #245 above. The early balls filled would be cooler and lose less pressure when chilled.
Seahawk fan here. I agree 100%.
Are you arguing that the Patriots balls got wet differently than the Colts? 
Uh, maybe? who knows? Are you implying that something is either 100% wet or 100% dry?
What was that confirmed psi again that the colt’s balls checked in at? What was that confirmed psi again that they measured at later? Your focus on the Colt’s footballs depends heavily on those numbers being confirmed.
Are you sure you’ve accounted for everything now? You were tossing around some exact math before without being aware of an up to .5 psi variance do to water, are you sure that’s the last unknown that could have any bearing on this?
45-7. The Patriots’ offense was on the field using their footballs a lot more than the Colts were (37:49 vs 22:11). So yes, quite possibly.
And here’s a statistics professor’s analysis of the Patriots’ fumble data: http://regressing.deadspin.com/why-those-statistics-about-the-patriots-fumbles-are-mos-1681805710?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
And another: http://soshcentral.com/football-science/football-statistics/2015/01/27/fumbling-data-truth-patriots-fumble-rate/
I’ve not tossed around any math. The Colts balls were legal at halftime. That means that they were at least 12.5 psi. They were legal at the beginning of the game - at most 13.5 psi. The most naturally occurring change is thus 1.0 psi. This assumes that the psi was actually measured at the beginning of the game. If it was not, this entire escapade is meaningless.
Suggesting that each teams balls experienced differential exposure to the weather sufficient to result in meaningfully different psi is another flight of desperate fantasy.
And asking me what the measured psi was at any point is laughable. I’m not the one speculating about some fluctuation or another that could account for another 0.07 psi. That’s every Pats fan on the internet.
Hentor, how do you know that the Colt’s balls were legal at the beginning of the game? I don’t know that, and neither do you. They were approved by the officials, as were the Patriots balls. But the NFL has not yet released what the PSI of any ball was before the game. We still have no confirmation that the officials tested the balls before the game, only that they were inspected.