There is a hypothesis that the pats were deflating the balls in 2014. Furthermore, it is conjectured that this is the reason they had 1 fumble per 105 plays while other teams had much worse ratios. In 2015 the pats ratio is now similar to other teams. Therefore, this is evidence that supports the hypothesis that they were deflating in 2014. It doesn't prove it, but it supports it. It is not contrary to it. If in fact the pats were deflating in 2014 and were not in 2015, this is the result that would be expected. If in 2015 they retained their ratio of 1:105, then this would be contradictory evidence--but that did not happen.
You said it was "positive evidence they were deflating footballs and that it did matter." You can't support either statement. At most you can say the available evidence supports your assumptions. And Fuck Tom Brady.
It is evidence that the O-Line was leaky and Brady coughed up the ball more than normal because he was getting hit constantly.
Really? Because he fumbled the ball the same amount of times in 2014 and 2015. The fumble statistic in the deflated ball case is a larger factor for the ball carriers, i.e. receivers and running backs, and the stats don't lie.
I'm not sure what he was looking at but New England did almost double their fumbles from 2014 going from 4 to 7, while not a big enough disparity to draw a valid argument from.
1. Burning Elvii, post 46 above: Using the entire lot of footballs, pats plays per fumble is 74.2 this year.......reduction from last year....... 14 fumbles, 7 lost Brady had 6 2. And the source of the 105 is http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/01/05/...-deflategate-fumbles-tom-brady-bill-belichick
Let's not forget NE has been accused of K ball schechanery in the past as well.....even though the NFL controls the balls.....NE pat personnel on field handle them. Gostkowski has hit a bit of an unusual rut past few weeks ..........NFL must have found something during ball checks
I'm pretty sure he just contracted Szechuan and Chicanery. Which sounds like a great way to describe what Belichik has been up too since 2000 or so.
Not gonna comment or argue this. Just decided to share it since somebody decided to beat this dead horse again. http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/01/05/...-deflategate-fumbles-tom-brady-bill-belichick By Michael Lopez Assistant professor of statistics at Skidmore College @StatsbyLopez Last winter, much was made about the extremely low fumble rates of the Patriots, leading many to speculate or conclude that their potentially deflated footballs were responsible. See FiveThirtyEight for a general summary of the arguments. In any case, the 2015 season makes for an excellent out-of-sample test with respect to New England's fumble tendencies. Although the Patriots have been accused of going crazy lengths to gain a winning edge, it seems safe to assume that any suspect ball routine could not have been a part of the game-day preparation process this season. (The NFL implemented new procedures for inspecting game balls.) As a result, if one initially made the link between the Patriots low fumble rates and deflated footballs, the natural follow-up would be to assume that New England's fumble rates would revert toward the league average in 2015. So what happened in 2015? • The Patriots had the fewest fumbles of any NFL offense. • The Patriots had the best fumble rate of any NFL offense. • The Patriots had one of their best fumble rates of the past decade. Here's a barplot of each offense's 2015 fumble rate. To match a previous author's chart, I'll use plays per fumble, which means that teams fumbling less often will have higher numbers. (Using the NFL's website, I grabbed the relevant offensive team information—fumbles and number of plays—and subtracted non-offensive team fumbles to ensure that fumbles using the ‘K’ balls weren't counted.) That's the Patriots on the far right, leading the league while fumbling only once every 105 plays. There are several explanations for their continued success of hanging on to the ball, none of which have to do with deflated footballs. As explained here, the Patriots have consistently led the league in plays that are associated with low fumble rates, including kneel downs, plays in opponent territory, and plays when holding a lead. Related, the Patriots, Broncos, and Panthers—three teams that went a combined 39-9 in 2015—finished first, fourth and fifth, respectively, in plays per fumble. A link between low football PSI's and high fumble rates was never established by anyone, so a check of the 2015 data shouldn’t mean much as far as the likelihood of the Patriots cheating. But the information provides a nice confirmation to what Gregory Matthews and I wrote back in January: Statistics is hard, and this can lead to deception, either willful or otherwise. The idea that the Patriots were a 1 in 16,000 type-of-outlier made for a nice story, and it was quite easy to use aggregated statistics that implicated New England. As often happens, however, there's more to data than meets the eye. In the case of fumble rates, New England has routinely led the league. It's a result that seems more likely to be accounted for by differences in points on the scoreboard, and not by differences in the pressure levels of footballs.
