[NFL] vBook: Colts vs Patriots (Deflategate)

[Irish Insanity]

Seems a little over the top on the punishment, but it's going to be alright. I hope we can at least split the first 4 games until he gets back. Gonna be an interesting year that's for sure.

I'd imagine, at minimum, the suspension will be cut in half on appeal. As I said in the deflate gate thread, suspend him for the preseason and call it good.

 

[johnnycando]

This will only further light a fire in Brady's belly.

The guy is a GD competitor, and in all honesty, this is too harsh.

Prolly a preemptive measure to ensure the appeal win still has lasting ramifications.

And I know Robert Kraft has more money than Jerry Jones, before any Pats fan respond to my stupid joke.

 

[IrishLax]

Pretty sure they set the penalties this high so that they can be reduced on appeal. I bet you he ends up with 2 games and the draft picks also get altered.

 

[phork]

So stupid. I find it hilarious that some players who broke laws didn't get as stiff a penalty. And who really gives a flying rats ass? 45-7 won't change with 1 or 2 psi.

 

[yankeeND]

Pretty sure they set the penalties this high so that they can be reduced on appeal. I bet you he ends up with 2 games and the draft picks also get altered.

I hope you and II are right. You would think that he punched his fiancé in the face, in an elevator, on camera or something. Jeez...

 

[tussin]

The NFL is such a joke.

 

[ShamrockOnHelmet]

Not enough, by half, but Goodell and Mr Magoo are buddies, so I didn't expect a legit punishment. But whatever, I'm glad the whole sordid thing is over. what am I saying, they won't stop cheating, it'll just be something else next year.

 

[wizards8507]

Wizard is not going to be pleased...

You rang?

Goodell is a fucking idiot. Ray Rice DEFINITELY punched his fiancee in the face. Two games. Tom Brady "more likely than not" was "generally aware" that his footballs were under inflated. Four games. Because The NFL. I want Aaron Rodgers suspended for four four games for over inflating his balls.

The best part? The Pats will go 3-1 during his suspension, win the East, and probably have home field through the AFC Championship.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 using Tapatalk.

 

[ab2cmiller]

Not enough, by half, but Goodell and Mr Magoo are buddies, so I didn't expect a legit punishment. But whatever, I'm glad the whole sordid thing is over. what am I saying, they won't stop cheating, it'll just be something else next year.

I'm guessing it will somehow involve the use of flying drones.

 

[Booslum31]

That Penalty is off the charts. Can't think of a time where the penalty even approached this. Wow!

 

[johnnycando]

You rang?

Goodell is a fucking idiot. Ray Rice DEFINITELY punched his fiancee in the face. Two games. Tom Brady "more likely than not" was "generally aware" that his footballs were under inflated. Four games. Because The NFL. I want Aaron Rodgers suspended for four four games for over inflating his balls.

The best part? The Pats will go 3-1 during his suspension, win the East, and probably have home field through the AFC Championship.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 using Tapatalk.

The Saints asked me to tell you screw you..

They lost a head coach, and a season for less. In my opinion.

 

[Irish YJ]

Pretty sure they set the penalties this high so that they can be reduced on appeal. I bet you he ends up with 2 games and the draft picks also get altered.

exactly what I was thinking.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

The Saints asked me to tell you screw you..

They lost a head coach, and a season for less. In my opinion.

I don't think it was less. Intentionally hurting people is not the same as doctoring footballs, a crime perpetrated by every QB in the league. The cover up was another thing, to be sure. But this is a crazy punishment.

 

[irishfan]

Goodell pretty much can't set foot in New Orleans anymore since Boutygate. I don't think I'd go to New England anytime soon if I were him.

1) First off, 4 games is obscene. Should have been 1 game (I'm sorry--you just can't give Rice 2 games and then give Brady equal to that or more....too many NFL PR domestic abuse commercials for the commish to justify that), with an appeal out of Goodell's hands.

2) Schefter said the league views this as a PED. Even if they want to use that argument, since when does the team get penalized for a player using a PED?

3) Very happy no Belichick anywhere in the report or punishment.

4) If the Brady appeal isn't heard by Goodell, there's no way it sticks. Nothing in the league's rules say a player has to hand over his phone/emails, and there isn't enough in the report with the texts or the air pressure to prove they're guilty.

5) So...the next player caught in a domestic abuse case pretty much has to get 6+ games, right?

6) Patriots/Colts next year....should be good. Pats by 50 this time? 38 wasn't too difficult in January.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

Goodell pretty much can't set foot in New Orleans anymore since Boutygate. I don't think I'd go to New England anytime soon if I were him.

1) First off, 4 games is obscene. Should have been 1 game (I'm sorry--you just can't give Rice 2 games and then give Brady equal to that or more....too many NFL PR domestic abuse commercials for the commish to justify that), with an appeal out of Goodell's hands.

2) Schefter said the league views this as a PED. Even if they want to use that argument, since when does the team get penalized for a player using a PED?

This is where I'm at. Maybe you can justify 4 games for Brady (though I would have thought 2 would have been the tops). But the draft picks are pretty obscene, in my Bears fan opinion.

 

[Irish Insanity]

This is where I'm at. Maybe you can justify 4 games for Brady (though I would have thought 2 would have been the tops). But the draft picks are pretty obscene, in my Bears fan opinion.

They should've made them start Cutler for the 4 games. Now that's a punishment

 

[FightingIrishLover7]

Goodell pretty much can't set foot in New Orleans anymore since Boutygate. I don't think I'd go to New England anytime soon if I were him.

1) First off, 4 games is obscene. Should have been 1 game (I'm sorry--you just can't give Rice 2 games and then give Brady equal to that or more....too many NFL PR domestic abuse commercials for the commish to justify that), with an appeal out of Goodell's hands.

2) Schefter said the league views this as a PED. Even if they want to use that argument, since when does the team get penalized for a player using a PED?

3) Very happy no Belichick anywhere in the report or punishment.

4) If the Brady appeal isn't heard by Goodell, there's no way it sticks. Nothing in the league's rules say a player has to hand over his phone/emails, and there isn't enough in the report with the texts or the air pressure to prove they're guilty.

5) So...the next player caught in a domestic abuse case pretty much has to get 6+ games, right?

6) Patriots/Colts next year....should be good. Pats by 50 this time? 38 wasn't too difficult in January.

The reason the Patriots are getting punished as a team is because the team was cheating, not just Brady.

I'm confident saying Bill and other coaches probably had no idea, but the locker room guys were doing this too.

They're part of the team, and so the team did cheat. And the team as a whole will get punished.

Does it suck for the innocent players and coaches? Obviously.

But this happens all the time to companies, organizations, and other sports teams.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

They should've made them start Cutler for the 4 games. Now that's a punishment

Or had Stafford yank him down by the neck.

 

[Irish Insanity]

Or had Stafford yank him down by the neck.

They can have Stafford for a back up for when Cutler simply quits. Double punishment.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

They can have Stafford for a back up for when Cutler simply quits. Double punishment.

Oh...Cutler doesn't quit. He just keeps slingin' it. Sometimes he should consider quitting...

 

[T Town Tommy]

Four games goes to two games on appeal. The fine is cut in half and the draft pick losses stick.

Right or wrong... bet this is how it will go down.

 

[IrishSteelhead]

Oh...Cutler doesn't quit. He just keeps slingin' it. Sometimes he should consider quitting...

If he quit now, he'd have as many playoff wins as the Detroit Lions have won in their franchise history.

 

[Irish Insanity]

If he quit now, he'd have as many playoff wins as the Detroit Lions have won in their franchise history.

Don't worry, if he quits now he'll have as many as the Lions will have in the next 50 years.

 

[IrishSteelhead]

[NFL] vBook: Colts vs Patriots (Deflategate)

Don't worry, if he quits now he'll have as many as the Lions will have in the next 50 years.

Haha. They will be good again next year. I wouldn't trade a bucket of piss for the Bears's future right now.

 

[ohara831]

I have no problem with the 4 games for Brady. But since they found the team and Coach did not know, I am wondering why the two draft picks, especially the 1st rounder for 2016. But as to the 4 games for Brady I have issues. My instinct says the appeal will have it cut to 3, but not down to 2.

 

[Irish#1]

You rang?

Goodell is a fucking idiot. Ray Rice DEFINITELY punched his fiancee in the face. Two games. Tom Brady "more likely than not" was "generally aware" that his footballs were under inflated. Four games. Because The NFL. I want Aaron Rodgers suspended for four four games for over inflating his balls.

The best part? The Pats will go 3-1 during his suspension, win the East, and probably have home field through the AFC Championship.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 using Tapatalk.

Always trying to justify or minimize. If he was just "generally aware" the penalties wouldn't have been as severe. He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

 

[Irish#1]

Four games goes to two games on appeal. The fine is cut in half and the draft pick losses stick.

Right or wrong... bet this is how it will go down.

I think you're right.

 

[Redbar]

So stupid. I find it hilarious that some players who broke laws didn't get as stiff a penalty. And who really gives a flying rats ass? 45-7 won't change with 1 or 2 psi.

The Saints asked me to tell you screw you..

They lost a head coach, and a season for less. In my opinion.

It was not a one game thing. They have been receiving a huge competitive advantage that began in 2007. Right after the rule change. The Saints did not gain any advantage from bounty gate and in reality was more dumb than anything. A PR nightmare.


Stats Show the New England Patriots Became Nearly Fumble-Proof after 2006 Rule Change Proposed by Tom Brady
Posted on January 26, 2015
by Warren Sharp

May 7 2015 Update: Please also review my response to the Ted Wells report.

While speculation exists that “Deflate Gate” was a one time occurrence, data I introduced last week indicated that the phenomena MAY have been an ongoing, long standing issue for the New England Patriots. Today, that possibility looks as clear as day.

Initially, looking at weather data, I noticed the Patriots performed extremely well in the rain, much more so than they were projected. I followed that up by looking at the fumble data, which showed regardless of weather or site, the Patriots prevention of fumbles was nearly impossible. Ironically, both studies saw the same exact starting point: 2007 was the first season where things really changed for the Patriots. Something started in 2007 which is still on-going today.

I wanted to compare the New England Patriots fumble rate from 2000, when HC Bill Belichick first arrived in New England, to the rest of the NFL. Clearly, one thing I found in my prior research was that dome teams fumble substantially less frequently, given they play at least 8+ games out of the elements each year. To keep every team on a more level playing field, I eliminated dome teams from the analysis, grabbed only regular season games, and defined plays as pass attempts+rushes+times sacked. The below results also look only at total fumbles, not just fumbles which are lost. This brought us to the ability to capture touches per fumble.

To really confirm something was dramatically different in New England, starting in 2007 thru present, I compared the 2000-06 time period (when Bill Belichick was their head coach and they won all of their Super Bowls) to the 2007-2014 time period. The beauty of data is the results speak for themselves:

(click to enlarge)

The data is jaw dropping, and this visual perfectly depicts what happened. From a more technical perspective, John Candido, a Data Scientist at ZestFinance who is a colleague of mine over at the NFLproject.com website and was also involved in the development of this research, comments:

Based on the assumption that plays per fumble follow a normal distribution, you’d expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten since 2007 once in 5842 instances.

Which in layman’s terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0001711874 probability to win. In other words, it’s very unlikely that results this abnormal are only due to the endogenous nature of the game.

Many of the arguments giving the Patriots the benefit of the doubt are evaporating. While this data does not prove they deflated footballs starting in 2007, we know they were interested in obtaining that ability in 2006. (This is something I found out AFTER I performed the first two analyses, both of which independently found that something changed starting in 2007.)

In 2006, Tom Brady (and Peyton Manning) lobbied in favor of changing a NFL rule, and as a result, the NFL agreed to change policies. Brady wanted the NFL to let EVERY team provide its OWN footballs to use on offense, even when that team was playing on the road. Prior to that year, the HOME team provided ALL the footballs, meaning the home quarterback selected the footballs the ROAD quarterback would play with on offense.

Brady’s quote at the time, when pushing for the change was: “The thing is, every quarterback likes it a little bit different. Some like them blown up a little bit more, some like them a little more thin, some like them a little more new, some like them really broken in.”

Obviously this information, when combined with the data above, is exceedingly compelling. Not only can you visually see the change when aggregating the data into periods of 2000-06 and 2007-14, you can clearly see how it occurs on the following two graphs. The data is the same, but details are added in the second graph to provide additional information and context:

(click to enlarge)

Once again, a key takeaway is deadly obvious: prior to 2007 the Patriots were RIGHT IN LINE with the league averages across the other non-dome teams. When you look team by team, they literally are in the middle of the pack for most seasons, as the histogram in the very first graphic at the top of this article shows. But starting in 2007, all similarities totally vanish.

The statistical “jump” the Patriots make in the 2006 offseason, from one fumble every 39 plays to one fumble every 76 plays is nothing short of remarkable. Their trendline over this period is not even close to that of the rest of the NFL.

The 2013 season is an oddity in that the Patriots were actually slightly worse than the rest of the NFL. Looking at that season, its apparent the reason: of the Patriots 23 fumbles that season, 6 (over 25%) occurred in a Sunday night game vs the Broncos played in 22 degree weather, with 22 mph winds and a wind chill of 6 degrees. Cold conditions of this nature absolutely cause more fumbles than usual. They fumbled a TOTAL of 5 times in 11 of their 16 games in 2013 (69% of their total games), so it truly was this week 12 “antarctic” game (and a week 17 game vs the Bills which saw 4 fumbles) which really put the Patriots fumble rates for 2013 out of sync. This is exactly why looking at small sample sets, such as single seasons, is not the preferred manner to investigate this analysis.

Why are fumbles so important? Because as Bill Belichick knows, perhaps more so than most NFL coaches due to his understanding of the game – turnovers usually control game outcomes. Since 2000, teams who won the turnover battle won 79% of their games, regardless of ANY other statistic. A 12-5 record equates to 75% wins, so its clear how vital turnovers are in the minds of intelligent coaches. And as far as turnovers are concerned, the number one concern for a team with a quarterback as skilled and proficient as Tom Brady is not interceptions (because there won’t be many), its fumbles.

There are many arguments which have been raised in favor of why the Patriots don’t fumble as often as other teams. Many of them are simply factually incorrect. If it was coaching, former players should be able to tell us that Bill Belichick suddenly and drastically changed the way he instructed players to carry the football in the 2006 offseason. But the data shows that if mysterious trade secret was delivered, the players forgot about it when they left New England, as their individual fumble rates became drastically worse when playing for other NFL teams.

The bottom line is, something happened in New England. It happened just before the 2007 season, and it completely changed this team. While NFL teams apparently are complaining to the league that they felt the Patriots played with deflated footballs during the 2014 season and postseason, all investigations into those allegations would be wise to reference my research herein, and begin the investigation in the 2006. That was when Tom Brady was able to persuade the NFL to change its rules to allow him (and other quarterbacks) to provide their own footballs for all road games. I will reiterate, this analysis cannot say it was, undoubtedly, illegal football deflation which caused the data abnormalities. But it does conclude that something absolutely changed, and it was not the result of simple random fluctuation.

__________________________

Because I was asked so often for the data that I used in the first analysis, as a courtesy, I am going to link an excel file with all the summary data used to create the graphics shown above. Support Data

Warren Sharp of sharpfootballanalysis.com is an industry pioneer at the forefront of incorporating advanced analytics and metrics into football analysis. A licensed Professional Engineer by trade, Warren applies the same critical thought process and problem solving techniques into his passion, football. After spending years constructing, testing and perfecting computer models written to understand the critical elements to win NFL football games, Warren’s quantitative analytics are used in private consulting work, and elements of which are publicly shared on sharpfootballanalysis.com. To contact Warren, please email sharp@sharpfootballanalysis.com or send a direct message on Twitter to @SharpFootball.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

Always trying to justify or minimize. If he was just "generally aware" the penalties wouldn't have been as severe. He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"...it is more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities."

~Wells Report

 

[PLACforever]

So do we get our bets back???