Great read on deflated balls.

[SDGuy73]

Summary of Findings;

The evidence we present points to a simple—and innocent—explanation for the change in pressure in the Patriots footballs. The Patriots balls were measured at the start of halftime, whereas the Colts balls were measured at the end of halftime, after sufficient time had passed for the balls to warm up and return to their pregame pressure. There is no need to consider the alternative hypothesis—that the Colts illegally inflated their footballs—because a simple physical explanation is available. The fact that the average pressure of the Colts balls was significantly above the prediction of the Ideal Gas Law, while that of the Patriots balls was not, is inconsistent with the findings of the Wells report. Our conclusion that the warming of the balls during halftime is the key factor overlooked in the Wells report is supported by the observation that the readings of the intercepted Patriots football, measured separately from the other Patriots balls, came in almost precisely at the prediction of the law. Under the hypothesis asserted by the Well report, the odds of this Patriots ball matching the Ideal Gas Law prediction were between 1 out of 3 and 1 out of 300. It is therefore unlikely that the Patriots deflated the footballs.

https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/On-the-Wells-report.pdf

It's a quick read. I wonder if Brady, NFLPA and his attorney will use this at all. I'm betting, yes.

 

[Southieinnc]

Summary of Findings;

The evidence we present points to a simple—and innocent—explanation for the change in pressure in the Patriots footballs. The Patriots balls were measured at the start of halftime, whereas the Colts balls were measured at the end of halftime, after sufficient time had passed for the balls to warm up and return to their pregame pressure. There is no need to consider the alternative hypothesis—that the Colts illegally inflated their footballs—because a simple physical explanation is available. The fact that the average pressure of the Colts balls was significantly above the prediction of the Ideal Gas Law, while that of the Patriots balls was not, is inconsistent with the findings of the Wells report. Our conclusion that the warming of the balls during halftime is the key factor overlooked in the Wells report is supported by the observation that the readings of the intercepted Patriots football, measured separately from the other Patriots balls, came in almost precisely at the prediction of the law. Under the hypothesis asserted by the Well report, the odds of this Patriots ball matching the Ideal Gas Law prediction were between 1 out of 3 and 1 out of 300. It is therefore unlikely that the Patriots deflated the footballs.

https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/On-the-Wells-report.pdf

It's a quick read. I wonder if Brady, NFLPA and his attorney will use this at all. I'm betting, yes.

 

[NorEEzta]

It won't matter to the emotionally handicapped. Read someone essentially equating it to a right-wing conspiracy.

 

[sharkymcwrath]

Not a mention of this in any of the mainstream sports media. Not a peep.

 

[BigKen]

I read a great article on Deflategate yesterday on PatsFans.com. The author talks about why rules have been made and compares this to the George Brett pinetar suspension.

He states the NFL Rules ver batim and than asks four very simple questions. Then he goes on to open up those questions. The most critical is strangley one that could be the NFL's total unraveling if Brady goes to court.

If the football can be between 11" and 11-1/2 inches long and between 7-1/4 and 7-1/2 inches in diameter, how was the league PSI of 12.5 - 13.5 psi determined? the larger ball would be softer than the shorter ball at 12.5 psi. The shorter ball would be much stiffer at 13.5 psi than the 11-1/2" ball. If the 11-1/2 ball was 7-1/2" in diameterand only inflated to 12.5 PSi in cold and wet weather, it could lose up to 8% of the inflation or 1 pound of air making the ball in play at 11.5 psi. Why does the league allow the balls to be different or varying sizes and why does the legue allow a 1 pound variance in inflation psi?

He goes on to talk about what the league requires officials to do before each game and how they're supposed to do it and brings out a few more questions.

It is honestly one of the best commentaries I've read on the "entire" subject.

 

[Rex Racer]

I read a great article on Deflategate yesterday on PatsFans.com. The author talks about why rules have been made and compares this to the George Brett pinetar suspension.

He states the NFL Rules ver batim and than asks four very simple questions. Then he goes on to open up those questions. The most critical is strangley one that could be the NFL's total unraveling if Brady goes to court.

If the football can be between 11" and 11-1/2 inches long and between 7-1/4 and 7-1/2 inches in diameter, how was the league PSI of 12.5 - 13.5 psi determined? the larger ball would be softer than the shorter ball at 12.5 psi. The shorter ball would be much stiffer at 13.5 psi than the 11-1/2" ball. If the 11-1/2 ball was 7-1/2" in diameterand only inflated to 12.5 PSi in cold and wet weather, it could lose up to 8% of the inflation or 1 pound of air making the ball in play at 11.5 psi. Why does the league allow the balls to be different or varying sizes and why does the legue allow a 1 pound variance in inflation psi?

He goes on to talk about what the league requires officials to do before each game and how they're supposed to do it and brings out a few more questions.

It is honestly one of the best commentaries I've read on the "entire" subject.

I don't find that helpful at all. A larger ball may have more cubic inches (not sure why they use sq in for a volumetric measurement) and thus 12 PSI is consistent for every cubic inch of volume. A smaller ball may have less cubic inches of volume, but the same holds true, each cubic inch will have the same pressure and the feel of the ball will not be impacted.

Personally, I think the whole issue is a fukin joke. The sloppiness in the handling of the footballs by the NFL at every level is beyond pathetic. It would seem to anyone with a functioning brain that without a control group (properly inflated, properly measured and recorded balls) everything after that is shit.

Can't say I'm surprised that the junkie that owns the Colts is the one who initiated this bitch fest.

 

[BigKen]

Rex.....don't you know that science is truth. Truth dispels rumor and theory. Science debunks junk.

The moment that science, physics or math is introduced into the argument, the fantasy world of the NFL cannot deal with it, therefore it is irrelevant.

Once Brady brings this court and science becomes part of the case, this will go from being a shit storm to a shit flinging contest. The NFL's only argument in the end will be......"But We Are the NFL".

 

[SDGuy73]

Not a mention of this in any of the mainstream sports media. Not a peep.

I found it on ESPNBoston. Thanks to Mike Riess. It should be on ESPN's front page. We'll see if NFL Live or NFLNetwork talks about it on Monday.

 

[TxHeat]

It won't matter to the emotionally handicapped. Read someone essentially equating it to a right-wing conspiracy.

THIS^^^^^^

 

[BigKen]

Do any of you Patriot fans realize how many threads are devoted to the Patriots outside of our message board?? Do you realize how often many of you have gotten sucked into and 40 page argument?? Have you thought about how many times you've stated fact after fact and had the same people come back with same argument? Today alone I've seen for different people (5 including myself) ask for documented proof that Brady did anything. You either get the "possibly quote or the probably" quote from the Wells Report. No one, not even Ted Wells has proof that Tom Brady did anything and the NFL knows it and still is strong arming him.

I'm going to ask you all to try to do something..........................

Ignore any post that is negative about the Patriots. Ignore Tgann69 and Tedmanand others who constantly drag you into a verbal fray. Don't even acknowledge anything they write. Skip over their comments and act as if they aren't even there. I absolutely guarantee the if we don't respond, they'll go away. Go to the Baltimore Ravens Thread and see how much activity there is.......they come at the Patriots because they don't have enough interest in the Ravens to hold a discussion in their own message board. If we ignore them, they have nothing.

Seriously, I'm sick of the same guys continually attacking the Patriots because their team can't beat them on the field.

 

[Yankee Traveler]

Do any of you Patriot fans realize how many threads are devoted to the Patriots outside of our message board?? Do you realize how often many of you have gotten sucked into and 40 page argument?? Have you thought about how many times you've stated fact after fact and had the same people come back with same argument? Today alone I've seen for different people (5 including myself) ask for documented proof that Brady did anything. You either get the "possibly quote or the probably" quote from the Wells Report. No one, not even Ted Wells has proof that Tom Brady did anything and the NFL knows it and still is strong arming him.

I'm going to ask you all to try to do something..........................

Ignore any post that is negative about the Patriots. Ignore Tgann69 and Tedmanand others who constantly drag you into a verbal fray. Don't even acknowledge anything they write. Skip over their comments and act as if they aren't even there. I absolutely guarantee the if we don't respond, they'll go away. Go to the Baltimore Ravens Thread and see how much activity there is.......they come at the Patriots because they don't have enough interest in the Ravens to hold a discussion in their own message board. If we ignore them, they have nothing.

Seriously, I'm sick of the same guys continually attacking the Patriots because their team can't beat them on the field.

Good points BK.

I personally have not visited the main boards in over....I don't even know. Since the Wells report came out I guess.

 

[TxHeat]

Do any of you Patriot fans realize how many threads are devoted to the Patriots outside of our message board?? Do you realize how often many of you have gotten sucked into and 40 page argument?? Have you thought about how many times you've stated fact after fact and had the same people come back with same argument? Today alone I've seen for different people (5 including myself) ask for documented proof that Brady did anything. You either get the "possibly quote or the probably" quote from the Wells Report. No one, not even Ted Wells has proof that Tom Brady did anything and the NFL knows it and still is strong arming him.

I'm going to ask you all to try to do something..........................

Ignore any post that is negative about the Patriots. Ignore Tgann69 and Tedmanand others who constantly drag you into a verbal fray. Don't even acknowledge anything they write. Skip over their comments and act as if they aren't even there. I absolutely guarantee the if we don't respond, they'll go away. Go to the Baltimore Ravens Thread and see how much activity there is.......they come at the Patriots because they don't have enough interest in the Ravens to hold a discussion in their own message board. If we ignore them, they have nothing.

Seriously, I'm sick of the same guys continually attacking the Patriots because their team can't beat them on the field.

I don't get into those continuous drag out threads on the general boards anymore. It's fruitless and non-productive to keep having the same arguments ad nauseum with the same people.

I refuse to do this.....

 

[Southieinnc]

Do any of you Patriot fans realize how many threads are devoted to the Patriots outside of our message board?? Do you realize how often many of you have gotten sucked into and 40 page argument?? Have you thought about how many times you've stated fact after fact and had the same people come back with same argument? Today alone I've seen for different people (5 including myself) ask for documented proof that Brady did anything. You either get the "possibly quote or the probably" quote from the Wells Report. No one, not even Ted Wells has proof that Tom Brady did anything and the NFL knows it and still is strong arming him.

I'm going to ask you all to try to do something..........................

Ignore any post that is negative about the Patriots. Ignore Tgann69 and Tedmanand others who constantly drag you into a verbal fray. Don't even acknowledge anything they write. Skip over their comments and act as if they aren't even there. I absolutely guarantee the if we don't respond, they'll go away. Go to the Baltimore Ravens Thread and see how much activity there is.......they come at the Patriots because they don't have enough interest in the Ravens to hold a discussion in their own message board. If we ignore them, they have nothing.

Seriously, I'm sick of the same guys continually attacking the Patriots because their team can't beat them on the field.

Lot of truth there, Big Ken.....

 

[BigKen]

Copied from CBS Sports.com today 6/15/2015

According to a study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute, the Wells Report – the independent investigation conducted by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP litigation partner Ted Wells upon which the NFL based the punishment that was handed down to the New England Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady for Deflategate – is "deeply flawed."

The American Enterprise Institute is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank whose mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate," according its web site.

The study's abstract (a one-paragraph summary of its findings) is below:

In the current “Deflategate” controversy, the New England Patriots have been accused of illicitly deflating footballs before the start of their 2015 American Football Conference championship game against the Indianapolis Colts. The National Football League and the lawyers it hired have produced a report — commonly known as the “Wells report” — that has been used to justify penalties against the Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady. Although the Wells report finds that the Patriots footballs declined in pressure significantly more than the Colts balls in the first half of the game, our replication of the report's analysis finds that it relies on an unorthodox statistical procedure at odds with the methodology the report describes. It also fails to investigate all relevant scenarios. In addition, it focuses only on the difference between the Colts and Patriots pressure drops. Such a difference, however, can be caused either by the pressure in the Patriots balls dropping below their expected value or by the pressure in the Colts balls rising above their expected value. The second of these two scenarios seems more likely based on the absolute pressure measurements. Logistically, the greater change in pressure in the Patriots footballs can be explained by the fact that sufficient time may have passed between halftime testing of the two teams' balls for the Colts balls to warm significantly, effectively inflating them.
In an accompanying New York Times article, Kevin A. Hasset and Stan A. Veuger, who authored the study, wrote, "Our study, written with our colleague Joseph Sullivan, examines the evidence and methodology of the Wells report and concludes that it is deeply flawed."

The conclusion centers mostly on the scientific analysis conducted in the Wells Report. An excerpt explaining some of the flaws is below:

The Wells report's main finding is that the Patriots balls declined in pressure more than the Colts balls did in the first half of their game, and that the decline is highly statistically significant. For the sake of argument, let's grant this finding for now. Even still, it alone does not prove misconduct. There are, after all, two possibilities. The first is that the Patriots balls declined too much. The second — overlooked by the Wells report — is that the Colts balls declined too little.

The latter possibility appears to be more likely. The Wells report notes the expected pressure for the footballs at halftime in the Patriots-Colts game, factoring in the decline in pressure to be expected when a ball, inflated in a warm room, has been moved to a cold outdoor field. If the Patriots deflated their balls, their pressure levels at halftime should have fallen below the expected level, while the Colts balls at halftime should have hovered around that level.

But when we analyzed the data provided in the Wells report, we found that the Patriots balls declined by about the expected amount, while the Colts balls declined by less. In fact, the pressure of the Colts balls was statistically significantly higher than expected. Contrary to the report, the significant difference between the changes in pressure of the two teams' balls was not because the pressure of the Patriots balls was too low, but because that of the Colts balls was too high.

How could this be? The report's own findings suggest an explanation: At halftime, N.F.L. officials measured the pressure of “only a sample” of the Colts balls (four out of 12) before they ran out of time; the second half of the game was about to begin. This implies that the Colts balls sat in the warm room where they were to be measured — and thus increased in pressure — for almost the entirety of halftime before being measured.

All of the 11 available Patriots balls, by contrast, were measured at halftime, which suggests that they were measured earlier, when they were colder — and thus lower in pressure. Although this explanation contradicts the Wells report's conclusions, it fits all the evidence.

The Times article ends with a recommendation from Hasset and Veuger that when the Roger Goodell hears Brady's appeal of his four-game suspension, he does so with the knowledge that the Wells Report is unreliable, though it stops short of suggesting any specific action Goodell should take with that knowledge.

When Hasset and Veuger presented similar findings about the Bountygate scandal at an NFL hearing in November 2012, the league later vacated all the players' suspensions.

 

[CreepCreep2014]

I have read these stories and it points out even more, esp for the stupid, that the NFL has nothing on TB and the Patriots. It points out how the Wells report was a joke and either missed, skipped or did not care about certain facts. More and more people are starting to ask questions that the NFL refuses to answer, it is not just NE fans and the Boston Media anymore. That rock the NFL is hiding under is getting smaller and smaller. Pretty soon they will be exposed and forced to answer questions that are going to make them look very, very bad. I for one am hoping this goes to court. In the end the haters are going to hate, does not matter what story is out there. The idiots who believe that NE cheated by creating the "tuck rule" will continue to spew they cheated for the past 12yrs.

Agree with Ken, you ignore them.....they will get board...

 

[NWPATSFAN]

I read a great article on Deflategate yesterday on PatsFans.com. The author talks about why rules have been made and compares this to the George Brett pinetar suspension.

He states the NFL Rules ver batim and than asks four very simple questions. Then he goes on to open up those questions. The most critical is strangley one that could be the NFL's total unraveling if Brady goes to court.

If the football can be between 11" and 11-1/2 inches long and between 7-1/4 and 7-1/2 inches in diameter, how was the league PSI of 12.5 - 13.5 psi determined? the larger ball would be softer than the shorter ball at 12.5 psi. The shorter ball would be much stiffer at 13.5 psi than the 11-1/2" ball. If the 11-1/2 ball was 7-1/2" in diameterand only inflated to 12.5 PSi in cold and wet weather, it could lose up to 8% of the inflation or 1 pound of air making the ball in play at 11.5 psi. Why does the league allow the balls to be different or varying sizes and why does the legue allow a 1 pound variance in inflation psi?

He goes on to talk about what the league requires officials to do before each game and how they're supposed to do it and brings out a few more questions.

It is honestly one of the best commentaries I've read on the "entire" subject.

That is a total new way to look at things. Never even ocurred to me.

 

[TxHeat]

I have read these stories and it points out even more, esp for the stupid, that the NFL has nothing on TB and the Patriots. It points out how the Wells report was a joke and either missed, skipped or did not care about certain facts. More and more people are starting to ask questions that the NFL refuses to answer, it is not just NE fans and the Boston Media anymore. That rock the NFL is hiding under is getting smaller and smaller. Pretty soon they will be exposed and forced to answer questions that are going to make them look very, very bad. I for one am hoping this goes to court. In the end the haters are going to hate, does not matter what story is out there. The idiots who believe that NE cheated by creating the "tuck rule" will continue to spew they cheated for the past 12yrs.

Agree with Ken, you ignore them.....they will get board...

This was a witch hunt from the get-go. The Wells Report was the biggest money pit ever conceived in sport history. The bottom line is that the Colts and Kensil were the force behind the ruse which anyone other than Pats fan can't and will never accept no matter what. I'll just sit back and smile when Goofdell and Wells get their report shredded to them on a silver platter and shoved up their ass. Let the trolls and haters (especially of the Colts and Ravens variety) keep on hating while they watch their teams get their hats handed to them by the Pats again and again.

 

[CreepCreep2014]

The NFL is going to get what they deserve, and I truly believe that. They got cocky and arrogant when Kraft said NE would accept the punishment handed down. They knew Kraft would not challenge the NFL and the other owners. Kraft statement also made the NFL think that they were guilty, which they were not and cleared of. However, they didn't expect Brady to fight back. I am willing to bet that the NFL thought Kraft would tell TB to just take the punishment and move on, wrong...It might have happened if it was a 25,000 fine and the team was not hit with such a BS penalty. I am starting to think that Kraft laid down for the owners and knew that TB was going to take this all the way and blow up the NFL. This is going to back fire on the NFL big time, and I cannot wait.

 

[TxHeat]

In Tom Curran's article he posted late last night he says:
"I think as we get closer to this appeal there will be more indications of just how hard the NFLPA and the Tom Brady camp is going to go after not just Goodell, but all the underlings - Kensil, Vincent and the rest."

I pray it goes like that. Christmas comes early for all Pats fans!!

 

[Southieinnc]

In Tom Curran's article he posted late last night he says:
"I think as we get closer to this appeal there will be more indications of just how hard the NFLPA and the Tom Brady camp is going to go after not just Goodell, but all the underlings - Kensil, Vincent and the rest."

I pray it goes like that. Christmas comes early for all Pats fans!!

Link please. I'm going to frame that.....