Analyzing outlying statistics across all the available variables would be an interesting technique to try to predict other potential rules violations. This could apply to many different types of sporting events.
I wonder if anyone is working on this problem?
Despite a few nit picky issues I have with this particular analysis of the Patriots fumble data it's probably the strongest evidence I've seen so far that there has likely been a persistent rules violation.
it's probably the strongest evidence I've seen so far that there has likely been a persistent rules violation.
That's only true if ball inflation tracks with fumbles. There have been lots of assertions that's the case, but I haven't seen any evidence.
Two counter examples:
- If you look at AFCC, that's Patriots had 1 fumble in the first half playing with an underinflated ball in dry weather conditions, and had zero fumbles in the second half playing with properly inflated balls, and in wet conditions.
- Aaron Rodgers is on record stating that he likes his footballs to be inflated as high as possible. But if you look at GB's fumble data in the link, they're #6 behind NE in total fumbles.
There are a whole bunch of confounding variables here, including coaching techniques (look at how Tiki Barber's corrected his fumble problems in one year after coaching changes).
I agree that we don't have a controlled study in this case. However, it will be interesting to look at this data at the end of next season. If the Patriots fumble stats revert to pre 2007 levels it will certainly raise some interesting questions.
If you watch Patriots games, you'll see that if Patriots running backs fumble, they get benched. If they do it again they get released. Belichick is maniacal about getting on his players about fumbling. That is a simple explanation. The team has been well-coached for a long time. If you think the Patriots' success is all from deflated balls, you need to explain how they out-scored the Colts 28-0 in the second half (and didn't fumble in horrible conditions).
Over the past two seasons there have been 9 total fumbles by Patriot running backs - only 1 all this year. All of those backs are still employed by the Patriots. Over those two seasons, the majority of fumbles came from Brady and Edelman.
Of the backs that fumbled in 2012, only Woodhead is gone. He fumbled only once.
Two backs fumbled in 2011, once each. Woodhead (who is gone) and Ridley, who is still a Patriot.
Patriot backs simply don't fumble. Brady and Edelman do, and Welker did a bit. Your explanation isn't supported by the data.
EDIT - I'm not sure my source differentiates fumbles from lost fumbles, although that doesn't seem to impact the conclusion regarding parent's comment.
Couldn't this be tested by looking a the frequency of fumbles made by backs before and after they play for the patriots? I mean, if the explanation of the patriots low fumble rate is because they deflated the balls then it should cause a corresponding jump in fumbles for those running backs that move on to other teams (who presumably are not deflating the balls).
Danny Woodhead: 0 fumbles with NY Jets in 2009-2010 (didn't play much), 1 fumble with NE Pats from 2010-2012, 1 fumble with SD Chargers 2013-2014 (did not play full year with SD in 2014 due to injury, but had many more attempts in 2013 with SD than with NE). http://www.nfl.com/player/dannywoodhead/4327/careerstats
LeGarrette Blount: 3 fumbles each year with TB Bucs, 2010-2011 & no fumbles in 2012, 3 fumbles with NE Pats, 2013, 1 fumble with Steelers in early 2014, 0 fumbles with NE Pats in late 2014
http://www.nfl.com/player/legarretteblount/497149/profile
Those are all the running backs I can think of who played for the Patriots and other teams in recent years. I'm not going to bother with Corey Dillion since he was before 2007.
ftr I am a Patriots who hopes that there is no wrong doing but is trying to keep an open mind.
"Patriots backs simply don't fumble": Yes, because if they have a fumbling problem, they stop playing until they fix it (Ridley) or they cease being Patriots if they can't fix it (Maroney). Belichick is well-known for having a "doghouse" for running backs who fumble.
"Your explanation isn't supported by the data":
I wasn't trying to give an explanation supported by the data. I was trying to give an explanation for the data that makes sense and is supported by observing the Patriots play.
It's like saying Magnus Carlsen must cheat at chess, because the chance of him making so few errors is effectively zero assuming he makes errors at the rate that other grandmasters do.
I'm not sure how useful it is to compare a chess grandmaster to the relatively ordinary (other than fumbling) Patriot running back contingent, past or present. If Carlsen were found with an extra pawn on the board, that might raise eyebrows.
I understand that Belichick has a doghouse for backs that fumble. The point seems to be that his doghouse is likely to be rarely occupied since 2007, and whether that is due to coaching, drafting backs with good hands, or something less wholesome.
I think it would be pretty easy to show, similar to this article -
Pre-computer era elite GMs and computer-era elite GMs have similar error rates[1], with the caveat that we presume disagreeing with the computer's top choice to be an error. They mostly agreed with the computer's assessment something like 50-57% of the time.
As far as I know Magnus' games haven't been subjected to this kind of analysis, and I recall 2 pretty bad moves in the recent match with Anand, so I'd be interested to see it. I suspect he may be even slightly above 60%.
Should it be something like high 70%'s though I think it would be time to start a conversation about it. It's how Ivanov was busted: overwhelmingly playing one of the top 2 engine moves, which is basically impossible. [2]
Fumbling players being treated harshly by their coaches is true of every team as far as I know. That said, I still think it's more likely that the Patriots have some unique practice/drilling regimen that results in less fumbles than they are regularly using deflated balls to their advantage. This is interesting in and of itself, so no matter what, I think this is an interesting analysis. But it's hard for me to believe that they were regularly using under-inflated balls for FOUR YEARS before being detected (or perhaps I should say reported).
Of course, giving the context of its publication, we know what it's trying to imply.
Wouldn't be particularly surprising if the ball PSI gradually decreased over time. Brady likes ball as low PSI as is allowed within the rules, and they probably became more and more comfortable with pushing the boundaries over time.
No one is claiming the Patriots aren't good. They are claiming that, with extremely good evidence at this point, they also cheated.
There are other teams that try really hard to train their players not to fumble, including taking them out until they learn not to fumble. Belichick has been otherworldly good at this training.
The Patriots were not always otherworldly at not fumbling. In fact, this acumen started the same year the NFL changed the rules so that the team was allowed to have full control of the balls after pregame inspection.
This isn't a minor issue. Turnovers are hugely predictive of game outcomes.
The Patriots were caught with deflated footballs. They had deflated footballs for a reason.
"They had the deflated footballs for a reason.": It's called the ideal gas law.
http://nesn.com/2015/01/boston-college-professor-weather-had...
If you're concerned that the chairman of BC's physics department didn't do his calculations correctly, I also have a Ph.D. in physics and corroborated them. Make sure you use both absolute pressure and absolute temperature if you want to do the computations yourself; it's really quite simple.
By the way, about why the Colts balls didn't deflate: the BC professor says they may have over-inflated them, but I think a simpler explanation is that if the Colts prepared their balls outdoors and they equilibrated to outdoors temperatures before giving them to the refs, you would not expect them to deflate. Watch Belichick's press conference today, with an understanding of the ideal gas law, and the fact that working in a ball will also increase the temperature of the gas inside it, and it becomes obvious that if they followed the legal procedure Belichick claimed they followed, the Patriots did not cheat, unless you think having your footballs obey the ideal gas law is cheating.
>"if the colts prepared their balls outdoors..."
>"they may have over-inflated them..."
You are certainly speculating quite a bit here, no? As opposed to assuming the Pats under inflated their balls, intentionally or unintentionally, you are speculating that the Colts over inflated theirs and/or inflated them in a different environment?
No the BC professor speculated that they over-inflated them. I speculated that they prepared the balls outdoors. The reason for the speculation is that I know the ideal gas law holds. Therefore, if the Colts balls did not deflate when they took them to a colder temperature, there must be an explanation. I think the likeliest explanation is that the gas inside the balls had already equilibrated to an outdoors temperature.
Many people are speculating that the Patriots cheated on no grounds except that the balls deflated when taken outdoors, which is exactly what you expect from the laws of physics.
No, people are speculating the Pats cheated under the assumption that both teams inflated their balls to a similar psi, under the same inflation conditions, and for some reason the Pats balls (at a home game) reacted differently to the same weather conditions.
Let's take it as a given that the Patriots balls deflated and the Colts balls didn't (we don't actually know that for certain, but I think it's reasonable to assume it's true). We know that if the Patriots prepared their balls indoors and worked on them up until the moment they gave them to the refs as they claimed they did and as is legal, the ideal gas law predicts a deflation of the Patriots' balls approximately equal to what is being rumored.
So the thing making people speculate the Patriots cheated is that the Colts' balls didn't deflate, combined with a lack of understanding of the ideal gas law, or a refusal to take it into account.
I take it as a given that the ideal gas law holds. That means that for the Colts' balls not to deflate when going from indoors to outdoors they must have prepared them differently than the Patriots. A simple explanation is that the gas inside their balls had already equilibrated to the outdoors temperatures before the balls were given to the refs (e.g. the Colts threw them around outside). It is speculation, but it seems to me more reasonable than the assumption that the Patriots' and Colts' balls both managed to evade the workings of the ideal gas law, and the Patriots' balls deflated because the Patriots cheated.
under the assumption that both teams inflated their balls to a similar psi, under the same inflation conditions
There are zero reasons to believe those assumptions are true.
or some reason the Pats balls (at a home game) reacted differently to the same weather conditions
All we know is that the Pats balls were under the limit and the Colts balls met the limit. To my knowledge, there has been nothing released/leaked about any decrease in pressure in the Colts balls, just that they were within the rules.
The Pats may or may not have done something untoward, but the only reason so many people seem to think it's a slam dunk is that they're misinterpreting the information that's out there.
It's not like this is the first time it's ever been cold outside. The New England Patriots play a lot of football, yes? They often do so during the winter months, no?
It's exactly what you'd expect from the laws of physics, which is precisely why even if the situation you suggest is the case, the Patriots still knew that the balls would deflate due to the aforementioned extremely predictable laws of physics, and they still cheated.
If they didn't know, then incompetence is no excuse. They cheated because they didn't know about the ideal gas law? They still cheated.
Maybe they didn't know about the ideal gas law. It seems like very few other people do. Maybe they did know about the ideal gas law and took advantage of it. In any case, they followed all the rules "to the letter", at least if you believe they did what they said they did. Most people say that when you follow all the rules, you are not "cheating".
You are certainly speculating quite a bit here, no?
Speculation is all there is at this point. All we know is that the Pats balls were under the NFL regs when measured at halftime and the Colts balls were not. We have no detailed information about the pre-game ball preparation steps for either team, no information about the Colts pressure preference (Belichick stated today that the Pats aim for a target pressure of 12.5 psi), etc.
And yes, the Colts could very well have overinflated their footballs, just as Aaron Rodgers claims to do with his game balls.
I don't understand this as a defense. Either a) they inflated them under (roughly) the same conditions as the Colts and the disparity in the pressures of the teams' balls is due to the fact that they were intentionally underinflated originally, or b) they were, as you say, inflated to the correct pressure under different conditions and drifted away from the regulation pressure due to a change in temperature. Either way, the balls were underinflated at game time. Scenario a is worse, of course, but even in scenario b, you have to wonder why they didn't correct the pressure. (Quarterbacks are surely able to detect the lower pressure, and pretty much everyone -- particularly professional QBs, I would think -- is aware that pressure drops with the temperature).
And in any case, at best this is a possible explanation for the underinflation. There is no evidence that the explanation you give is true, or even likely, since it rests on totally unsupported assumptions about the conditions under which the teams inflated their balls.
The reason that they didn't correct the pressure at game-time is that after the Patriots give the balls to the referees 2 hours and 15 minutes before game time, they are not allowed to touch them, and the refs do not have the procedure of re-checking them and correcting them. I imagine that there might be a rules or procedure change so that they do, and as early as the Super Bowl.
The "evidence" for my explanation is the ideal gas law and what Belichick said his team did in his press conference today. If the Patriots followed that procedure, which there is no reason to believe they didn't, and which is legal, one expects from the ideal gas law that their balls would seem under-inflated at half-time. It's basic physics and easy to understand theoretically and reproduce experimentally.
My speculation for what the Colts did rests on the reports that their balls did not deflate. For that to hold, given the laws of physics, something like the balls equilibrating to the outdoors temperatures before giving them to the refs must have happened.
you have to wonder why they didn't correct the pressure.
AFAIK, teams are not allowed to reinstall balls during the game, refs can, but they obviously didn't detect it until they measured the pressure at halftime.
Quarterbacks are surely able to detect the lower pressure
Everyone seems to be taking this as a given when it's not at all. There are qb's who can detect it, and others who can't.
Centers also handle the ball on every offensive play. Most centers are intelligent and kinesthetic players who would be as sensitive as the QB to the feeling of the ball. Someone needs to tough-talk the Pats center about this.
The author of this article did a follow-up post in which he compared individual players before, during and after playing for the Patriots, and found very suspicious trends. On average the players were only good at fumbles when they were playing for New England. Of course, one can still argue that Belichick's focus on fumbling is only effective during the time that players are employed by New England, but you'd still expect to see SOME carryover to players' later teams if only because of whatever good habits they picked up playing for NE.
Assessing Belichick's attitudes toward fumbles is subjective, not objective. The number of player fumbles is objective. Anyone know an NFL coach who likes fumbles? Brady has fumbled multiple times and still starts.
plays per fumble is not a very good metric - as fumbles go down it increases exponentially. If you look at the total fumbles, the patriots are #1 but only 7 ahead of #2. The two worst teams are 10 behind the next two teams. I didn't run the numbers, but eyeballing it, it seems like the Patriots are pretty easily within a couple standard deviations there.
It's not as damning for the Patriots. But very interesting that it suddenly started in 2007, the same year the NFL changed the rules to allow visiting teams to use their own balls.
Thanks this is a much more mathematically reasonable analysis. I especially like the idea of using the #fumbles made by Pats' opponents as a control for the weather (although that confounds the Pats' defense's ability to generate fumbles).
The OP gets credit for noticing an unusual trend in the data, but does all kinds of weird seat-of-the-pants analysis that I found pretty hard to even look at.
E.g. Sorting the teams by fumble frequency, and then running a regression on the ranked list (!!?); using plays/fumble instead of fumbles/play; reporting stats with the null hypothesis that the Pats fumble rate is drawn randomly from other teams (instead of asking what the likelihood is of an extreme value at least that high).
As someone who doesn't follow the NFL I am surprised that they allow the teams to supply their own balls. Seems it would be less complicated and achieve an even playing field if everyone had to use the same balls supplied by the league.
Does this happen in baseball/ basketball as well? From an Australian perspective it seems unusual.
Quarterbacks like their footballs to be broken in a bit, and they all have their own preference for doing it. They lobbied the NFL years back to let them break in the game footballs and the NFL said OK. They have to use official NFL footballs and they are SUPPOSED to be properly inflated at game time. Each team uses their own footballs while on offense.
I doubt this happens in basketball because the same ball is being handled by numerous people on both teams, so it wouldn't be fair to let one player or team break the ball in to their own preferences. The same would be true of your AFL. In the NFL, teams are using their own broken in balls, and the quarterback is (usually) the only guy who has to actually throw it.
Baseballs only last a couple of pitches and offense/defense are completely different games, so I seriously doubt anyone is allowed to do anything to any ball before the game. When a pitcher gets a new ball it is already pre-rubbed in a special mud, and they can rub it in dirt a bit but they can't put anything that will stick to the ball on it as it gives the pitcher an advantage.
Baseballs are heavily regulated in game due to the long legacy of doctoring the ball to achieve otherwise impossible movement on pitched balls. Each ball in play goes through the home plate umpire before making it to the pitcher/catcher.
Of course in baseball you'll still occasionally see the pitcher with a hidden "foreign substance" used to doctor the ball once they get ahold of it. Back 20ish years ago it was not too rare for a pitcher to be discovered with a nail file or scratching the ball on their belt buckle. Generally this is seen as "part of the game", and well, there are admitted spitballers/nail-filers in the hall of fame and nobody really cares. Nowadays, if a pitcher gets caught with a "foreign substance" (usually pine tar), they are usually suspended for a few games, the media goes into a frenzy, and retired baseball players say they all did it too.
We have to remember that the NFL, after everything is said and done, is a business. They want to make money any way they can. A great way to do that is by having its teams score lots of touchdowns. But not just any touchdowns: passing touchdowns. There's nothing as exciting to watch as a quarterback throwing a hail marry into the end zone and having the receiver diving for it. Those kinds of plays are more likely to happen if the ball is broken in to the quarterback's liking.
The ruling seems weird, but that's probably why the NFL allows its teams to supply their own game balls, instead of providing fresh ones for every game.
It would be interesting to get the stats on fumbles during kickoff/punt returns (when a neutral kicking ball is in use, not a team-supplied offensive ball), and on plays involving interceptions or fumble recoveries (where they would be using the other team's ball). If they rank highly in fumble prevention in those situations, it would suggest that this is a result of coaching, not using a particular ball.
Kickoff and punt return fumbles can be the result of other factors - players traveling at high speed over a long distance hitting a returner looking skyward is a unique football situation that only occurs on returns.
Interceptions and recoveries would be by defensive players, who would spend much less time focusing on ball handling since they rarely carry the ball.
For those of you who aren't keeping up with the up to the minute minutae of the New England Patriots (American football team) scandal (presumably because you have lives), head coach Bill Belichick gave a press conference a few hours ago where he provided a hypothesis of what might have happened: as many people know, quarterbacks like their game footballs prepared in specific (sometimes elaborate [0]) ways prior to use in games. Belichick says that the team went over the process they use for games a few days ago and they determine that the preparation process they use for their footballs (which he claims they do right up to the point they are given to officials for pre-game testing) increases the air pressure in the balls by about 1 psi [1]. Therefore, the balls appear legal when tested by officials, but after a few hours of sitting around, the pressure reduces to below the legal limit. He doesn't specify the process used by the team, but presumably it's some kind of rubbing that heats the ball up, and when it cools down the interior air pressure is reduced accordingly.
I'm sure someone will test this out and verify or discredit the claim.
Going from 75 degrees to 50 produces something like a 1.5 psi reduction. 85 -> 35 wound be closer to a 2psi drop. Water vapor increases the drop. Funny thing is searching for the calculation produces highly variable results.
Belichick specifically said he was not talking about atmospheric temperature conditions, but the conditions of the ball. Presumably whatever rubbing of the ball was necessary for preparation heated the air in the ball. He must have explained this in the most obtuse way possible to reduce the chance people call him a cheater for heating the air in the ball.
I was being self deprecating - you can see from my other post in this thread and from my gameday Twitter posts ([0] for example) that I'm an NFL/Patriots fan.
The game against the Colts the Patriots clearly cheated. It is beyond reasonable that 11 of 12 footballs are 2psi less than the rule allows. Especially since the 12th football of regulation weight is the football used for kicking as you want the football inflated properly. But using fumbles as proof of long term violation is tough because their are too many factors to consider. Patriots are a pass heavy team and have been for a long time. They use multiple RB's and a fresh RB is less likely to fumble than one RB used heavily throughout the game due to mental and physical fatigue. WR's fumble but are less likely than RB's. An under-inflated ball is easier to grip so it would be interesting to see how WR's who left have fared on their new teams and if any returned later, after playing poorly on new team, to play well for the Patriots. Since 2007 has Tom Brady's completion % and interception ratio on the road improved drastically? All these things could be explained by an under-inflated but not definitively.
You are incorrect with respect to your explanation of "the 12th football being used for kicking". An entire separate group of footballs are used for kicking, outside control of either team. The kicking balls are brand new and are not allowed to be broken-in. They still have the waxy coating a new ball has. This was done some years ago to try to reduce the effectiveness of kickers.
I stand corrected, I didnt know that tidbit and just assumed that the 12th ball was for kickoff/field goals. But what about punting is it the same ball used for kicking or would it be part of the 12?
I'm not convinced that it's okay to just remove all the dome-teams from the plot. Using the author's data, here's a plot of all the teams and total fumbles (not 'fumbles lost' that the author focuses on):
The Patriots are not even the top team! It's actually the Falcons that have the most plays per fumble. If it's "nearly impossible" for the Patriots, what does that say about the Falcons? The author focuses on "fumbles lost" because that number is more dramatic if one is trying to prove that the Patriots did something wrong. That number in isolation only shows that the Patriots were extremely good at recovering their own fumbles.
Looking at the graph, there is a notable bend at the top 4 teams. Either the top 4 teams have fewer fumbles through training, or the top 4 teams are all cheating somehow. It's hard to call the Patriots statistics impossible when they're in 2nd place.
"But in 2007, something happened to propel [the Patriots] to a much better rate."
The author is using a 5-year average, and then concluding that something must have happened in a single year that is suddenly different. What that implies to me, is that they had a particularly terrible year in 2002. So, when the really bad year slides off of the 5-year moving average, then the 5-year average suddenly looks much better.
Also, while the article ultimately looks at both, the "money chart" is for fumbles lost, rather than total fumbles. I'm pretty sure the stat guys at footballoutsiders.com have more than once run the numbers to show that fumble recovery is pure chance; hard to see how having easier to handle balls increases those odds.
Listen, engineers and scientists: 11 out of 12 balls, markedly different and underinflated compared to the other team's balls? This is a priori evidence of tampering. Any jury would convict. We don't need a Perry Mason-type confession; we don't need to identify the culprit. The team should be strongly punished for breaking the NFL rules. I think the NFL should do an extensive investigation, after the initial punishment, which justly would be done BEFORE the Super Bowl. This investigation needs to determine whether the Pats have cheated with underinflated balls over a period of months and years. It can be done. Then is the time for scientific analysis, testimony by physicists, and so on.
My point is: We don't need to identify the person responsible, and we don't need a confession. Guilt is obvious, a priori. Punishment should be swift.
62 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadI wonder if anyone is working on this problem?
Despite a few nit picky issues I have with this particular analysis of the Patriots fumble data it's probably the strongest evidence I've seen so far that there has likely been a persistent rules violation.
That's only true if ball inflation tracks with fumbles. There have been lots of assertions that's the case, but I haven't seen any evidence.
Two counter examples:
- If you look at AFCC, that's Patriots had 1 fumble in the first half playing with an underinflated ball in dry weather conditions, and had zero fumbles in the second half playing with properly inflated balls, and in wet conditions.
- Aaron Rodgers is on record stating that he likes his footballs to be inflated as high as possible. But if you look at GB's fumble data in the link, they're #6 behind NE in total fumbles.
There are a whole bunch of confounding variables here, including coaching techniques (look at how Tiki Barber's corrected his fumble problems in one year after coaching changes).
Of the backs that fumbled in 2012, only Woodhead is gone. He fumbled only once.
Two backs fumbled in 2011, once each. Woodhead (who is gone) and Ridley, who is still a Patriot.
Patriot backs simply don't fumble. Brady and Edelman do, and Welker did a bit. Your explanation isn't supported by the data.
Source. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/nwe/2014.htm
EDIT - I'm not sure my source differentiates fumbles from lost fumbles, although that doesn't seem to impact the conclusion regarding parent's comment.
LeGarrette Blount: 3 fumbles each year with TB Bucs, 2010-2011 & no fumbles in 2012, 3 fumbles with NE Pats, 2013, 1 fumble with Steelers in early 2014, 0 fumbles with NE Pats in late 2014 http://www.nfl.com/player/legarretteblount/497149/profile
Laurance Maroney: 1 fumble in 2006, 4 fumbles in 2009 with NE Pats, 0 fumbles with Den Broncos in 2010 http://www.nfl.com/player/laurencemaroney/2506884/profile
Sammy Morris: I'm not going to summarize his stats, but he has a whole bunch of fumbles with a bunch of teams including NE. http://www.nfl.com/player/sammymorris/2504126/profile
Those are all the running backs I can think of who played for the Patriots and other teams in recent years. I'm not going to bother with Corey Dillion since he was before 2007.
ftr I am a Patriots who hopes that there is no wrong doing but is trying to keep an open mind.
"Your explanation isn't supported by the data": I wasn't trying to give an explanation supported by the data. I was trying to give an explanation for the data that makes sense and is supported by observing the Patriots play.
It's like saying Magnus Carlsen must cheat at chess, because the chance of him making so few errors is effectively zero assuming he makes errors at the rate that other grandmasters do.
I understand that Belichick has a doghouse for backs that fumble. The point seems to be that his doghouse is likely to be rarely occupied since 2007, and whether that is due to coaching, drafting backs with good hands, or something less wholesome.
I appreciate the points on Maroney and Ridley.
Pre-computer era elite GMs and computer-era elite GMs have similar error rates[1], with the caveat that we presume disagreeing with the computer's top choice to be an error. They mostly agreed with the computer's assessment something like 50-57% of the time.
As far as I know Magnus' games haven't been subjected to this kind of analysis, and I recall 2 pretty bad moves in the recent match with Anand, so I'd be interested to see it. I suspect he may be even slightly above 60%.
Should it be something like high 70%'s though I think it would be time to start a conversation about it. It's how Ivanov was busted: overwhelmingly playing one of the top 2 engine moves, which is basically impossible. [2]
1 - http://en.chessbase.com/post/computers-choose-who-was-the-st...
2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr0J8SPENjM
Of course, giving the context of its publication, we know what it's trying to imply.
There are other teams that try really hard to train their players not to fumble, including taking them out until they learn not to fumble. Belichick has been otherworldly good at this training.
The Patriots were not always otherworldly at not fumbling. In fact, this acumen started the same year the NFL changed the rules so that the team was allowed to have full control of the balls after pregame inspection.
This isn't a minor issue. Turnovers are hugely predictive of game outcomes.
The Patriots were caught with deflated footballs. They had deflated footballs for a reason.
By the way, about why the Colts balls didn't deflate: the BC professor says they may have over-inflated them, but I think a simpler explanation is that if the Colts prepared their balls outdoors and they equilibrated to outdoors temperatures before giving them to the refs, you would not expect them to deflate. Watch Belichick's press conference today, with an understanding of the ideal gas law, and the fact that working in a ball will also increase the temperature of the gas inside it, and it becomes obvious that if they followed the legal procedure Belichick claimed they followed, the Patriots did not cheat, unless you think having your footballs obey the ideal gas law is cheating.
You are certainly speculating quite a bit here, no? As opposed to assuming the Pats under inflated their balls, intentionally or unintentionally, you are speculating that the Colts over inflated theirs and/or inflated them in a different environment?
Many people are speculating that the Patriots cheated on no grounds except that the balls deflated when taken outdoors, which is exactly what you expect from the laws of physics.
So the thing making people speculate the Patriots cheated is that the Colts' balls didn't deflate, combined with a lack of understanding of the ideal gas law, or a refusal to take it into account.
I take it as a given that the ideal gas law holds. That means that for the Colts' balls not to deflate when going from indoors to outdoors they must have prepared them differently than the Patriots. A simple explanation is that the gas inside their balls had already equilibrated to the outdoors temperatures before the balls were given to the refs (e.g. the Colts threw them around outside). It is speculation, but it seems to me more reasonable than the assumption that the Patriots' and Colts' balls both managed to evade the workings of the ideal gas law, and the Patriots' balls deflated because the Patriots cheated.
There are zero reasons to believe those assumptions are true.
or some reason the Pats balls (at a home game) reacted differently to the same weather conditions
All we know is that the Pats balls were under the limit and the Colts balls met the limit. To my knowledge, there has been nothing released/leaked about any decrease in pressure in the Colts balls, just that they were within the rules.
The Pats may or may not have done something untoward, but the only reason so many people seem to think it's a slam dunk is that they're misinterpreting the information that's out there.
It's exactly what you'd expect from the laws of physics, which is precisely why even if the situation you suggest is the case, the Patriots still knew that the balls would deflate due to the aforementioned extremely predictable laws of physics, and they still cheated.
If they didn't know, then incompetence is no excuse. They cheated because they didn't know about the ideal gas law? They still cheated.
Speculation is all there is at this point. All we know is that the Pats balls were under the NFL regs when measured at halftime and the Colts balls were not. We have no detailed information about the pre-game ball preparation steps for either team, no information about the Colts pressure preference (Belichick stated today that the Pats aim for a target pressure of 12.5 psi), etc.
And yes, the Colts could very well have overinflated their footballs, just as Aaron Rodgers claims to do with his game balls.
And in any case, at best this is a possible explanation for the underinflation. There is no evidence that the explanation you give is true, or even likely, since it rests on totally unsupported assumptions about the conditions under which the teams inflated their balls.
The "evidence" for my explanation is the ideal gas law and what Belichick said his team did in his press conference today. If the Patriots followed that procedure, which there is no reason to believe they didn't, and which is legal, one expects from the ideal gas law that their balls would seem under-inflated at half-time. It's basic physics and easy to understand theoretically and reproduce experimentally.
My speculation for what the Colts did rests on the reports that their balls did not deflate. For that to hold, given the laws of physics, something like the balls equilibrating to the outdoors temperatures before giving them to the refs must have happened.
AFAIK, teams are not allowed to reinstall balls during the game, refs can, but they obviously didn't detect it until they measured the pressure at halftime.
Quarterbacks are surely able to detect the lower pressure
Everyone seems to be taking this as a given when it's not at all. There are qb's who can detect it, and others who can't.
http://www.sharpfootballanalysis.com/blog/2015/new-england-p...
http://advancednflstats.com/index.php/home/research/general/...
It's not as damning for the Patriots. But very interesting that it suddenly started in 2007, the same year the NFL changed the rules to allow visiting teams to use their own balls.
The OP gets credit for noticing an unusual trend in the data, but does all kinds of weird seat-of-the-pants analysis that I found pretty hard to even look at.
E.g. Sorting the teams by fumble frequency, and then running a regression on the ranked list (!!?); using plays/fumble instead of fumbles/play; reporting stats with the null hypothesis that the Pats fumble rate is drawn randomly from other teams (instead of asking what the likelihood is of an extreme value at least that high).
Does this happen in baseball/ basketball as well? From an Australian perspective it seems unusual.
I doubt this happens in basketball because the same ball is being handled by numerous people on both teams, so it wouldn't be fair to let one player or team break the ball in to their own preferences. The same would be true of your AFL. In the NFL, teams are using their own broken in balls, and the quarterback is (usually) the only guy who has to actually throw it.
Baseballs only last a couple of pitches and offense/defense are completely different games, so I seriously doubt anyone is allowed to do anything to any ball before the game. When a pitcher gets a new ball it is already pre-rubbed in a special mud, and they can rub it in dirt a bit but they can't put anything that will stick to the ball on it as it gives the pitcher an advantage.
Of course in baseball you'll still occasionally see the pitcher with a hidden "foreign substance" used to doctor the ball once they get ahold of it. Back 20ish years ago it was not too rare for a pitcher to be discovered with a nail file or scratching the ball on their belt buckle. Generally this is seen as "part of the game", and well, there are admitted spitballers/nail-filers in the hall of fame and nobody really cares. Nowadays, if a pitcher gets caught with a "foreign substance" (usually pine tar), they are usually suspended for a few games, the media goes into a frenzy, and retired baseball players say they all did it too.
The ruling seems weird, but that's probably why the NFL allows its teams to supply their own game balls, instead of providing fresh ones for every game.
http://a.espncdn.com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1380568.html
Interceptions and recoveries would be by defensive players, who would spend much less time focusing on ball handling since they rarely carry the ball.
I'm sure someone will test this out and verify or discredit the claim.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sports/football/eli-mannin...
[1] http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/extra_points/...
Why does it matter what people do for leisure?
[0] https://twitter.com/Anechoic/status/558381309115244545
http://i.imgur.com/QP6LXWg.png
The Patriots are not even the top team! It's actually the Falcons that have the most plays per fumble. If it's "nearly impossible" for the Patriots, what does that say about the Falcons? The author focuses on "fumbles lost" because that number is more dramatic if one is trying to prove that the Patriots did something wrong. That number in isolation only shows that the Patriots were extremely good at recovering their own fumbles.
Looking at the graph, there is a notable bend at the top 4 teams. Either the top 4 teams have fewer fumbles through training, or the top 4 teams are all cheating somehow. It's hard to call the Patriots statistics impossible when they're in 2nd place.
"But in 2007, something happened to propel [the Patriots] to a much better rate."
The author is using a 5-year average, and then concluding that something must have happened in a single year that is suddenly different. What that implies to me, is that they had a particularly terrible year in 2002. So, when the really bad year slides off of the 5-year moving average, then the 5-year average suddenly looks much better.
My point is: We don't need to identify the person responsible, and we don't need a confession. Guilt is obvious, a priori. Punishment should be swift.