Deflation-gate

One thing I've harped on constantly in this thread is the lack of fairness in the NFL processes and procedures as they relate to Deflategate. I felt that Goodell and company had treated Brady particularly unfairly during the arbitration process, and Judge Berman agreed, but not for the same reasons. He felt it unfair for what seem to me technical reasons, namely not providing adequate notice of consequences for football deflation and lack of cooperation (not handing over his cell phone), and not allowing Brady's lawyers to examine investigative notes or cross examine Pash.I felt it unfair for different reasons. It seemed to me just generally unfair that Goodell appointed himself arbitrator, since he was not neutral, but I was wrong about that. Non-neutral arbitrators are allowed. It is arbitrators failing to behave impartially that are not allowed, because it violates the FAA. Legal analysts are saying that the NFL's loss of five consecutive appeals points out how difficult it is for non-neutral arbitrators to act impartially, and that the NFL must change its procedures.So it didn't violate the CBA when Goodell appointed himself as arbitrator for Brady's appeal. What it did was assign Goodell the Herculean task of behaving impartially in a case where he already had very strong opinions. Obviously he wasn't up to it.But what seemed most unfair to me was the assumption that there was any deflation at all. Even Judge Berman accepted that the Patriot footballs had been deflated before the start of the AFC game against the Colts. When a conclusion is reached from insufficient evidence, which is blatantly unfair, there is apparently no legal recourse. Judges are not permitted to reconsider findings based on evidence. What Judge Berman did was rule that the NFL had no policy that prohibited being "generally aware," nor any defined penalty for it. He also ruled that "Brady had no notice that he could receive a four-game suspension for general awareness of ball deflation by others or participation in any scheme to deflate footballs,..."What this means is that Goodell's arbitration finding stands. The NFL has ruled that Brady was at the center of a scheme to deflate footballs, and the federal appeals court ruling does not affect that. This seems very unfair, the most unfair thing of all in this unhappy mess. The court system, both civil and criminal, is strongly proscribed from reconsidering the evidence at each appeals level, and so appeals are focused on issues of process that might have affected the outcome. They rarely reconsider the evidence.There's incredible irony here. The appeals are being made based upon the belief that the evidence was incorrectly considered, yet they're not allowed to appeal on the evidence, so they have to appeal on the process. If a jury reaches a verdict of guilt because they accepted the testimony of a psychic who claimed to have "witnessed" the murder in a vision, an appeals court can't accept a challenge of that judgment, only a challenge based on the process used to reach that judgment. That's absurd, of course, but to allow the evidence to be reconsidered over and over again would mean justice never reaching any conclusions, which would be no justice at all.But episodes of jury decisions overturned by DNA evidence have mounted to considerable heights, and so we know that even in cases of the most heinous crimes of rape and murder where the stakes are high and considerable effort is made to avoid mistakes, nonetheless mistakes are made with disturbing frequency. And when the deciding entity is a non-neutral arbitrator the mistakes are going to be more obvious and more numerous.--Percy

It's been argued that Brady didn't actually want footballs at 12.5 psi but even lower, and that's why he ordered McNally to let a little air out of the footballs after the refs had already made sure the footballs were set at 12.5 psi.But this makes no sense. On the road where the locker room attendants are provided by the host team Brady would have no one to perform the ball deflation. Believers in the supposed conspiracy must think that Brady is okay with footballs at a higher pressure for away games than for home games. And Brady never practices with balls set that low (according to the Wells report, Jastremski set the footballs to around 12.8 psi before the Jets game, and 12.6 psi after), so why would Brady ever want balls in a game set to an unfamiliarly low pressure? He wouldn't, of course.Brady says that when he selects the footballs for the game, in his mind they are perfect. Once he approves them he doesn't want anyone fiddling with the pressure or anything else. If he selects balls that are inflated outside the range then the refs will change them, and if someone tries to deflate them with a needle then they'll be changed again, and inaccurately, too. It's absurd to think that Brady would find all this fiddling with football pressure tolerable. What he wants is for the pressure to be set precisely to a low value within the acceptable range, because that guarantees that the refs won't change the pressure, and it means he'll get the same pressure both home and away.Earlier today an Italian high court threw out the convictions of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Does anyone remember now the complicated story constructed by prosecutors? Just to mention a few things, Knox attacked Kercher in her bedroom, banged her head against a wall, and attempted to strangle her as part of a sex game gone wrong. Knox and Sollecito held Kercher down while another man (Guede) sexually abused her. They locked the bedroom door after the murder, but Sollecito broke back into the bedroom to clean up evidence (thereby explaining why the bedroom door was broken down). The story was incredibly detailed and complex and, according to the high court, completely fictional. The high court described the lower court verdicts using terms like "glaring errors" and "deplorable."The story in the Wells report about Brady, Jastremski and McNally was also incredibly detailed and complex, and just as fictional. A collection of sparse and inconclusive evidence can tell almost any story you like. This is not an easy lesson for prosecutors to learn, as the continuous trickle of innocent people out of our jails attests. I was once a witness to an assault, and I was surprised to learn how focused the prosecutor was on composing a story a grand jury would buy than on what actually happened. This was the trap that Wells and the NFL set for themselves and then fell into.The NFL has put in place new and flawed procedures for checking football pressure this season, and as we move into the lower temperatures of late fall and winter it will quickly be revealed just how difficult it is to check football pressures during a 20-minute halftime.--Percy

Apparently we didn't get the full story in the news reports. According to sketch artist William J. Hennessy Jr. Brady was stomping across the tables: No wonder Brady prevailed. --Percy

Right. After the Jets game they became very aware that the referees might change the pressure in the footballs. I'm sure they were aware of the possibility before, but after that game they became aware of how drastic the change in pressure might be. Concern about this possibility is what prompted all the text messages. If I'm understanding you, you're positing a scenario where the Patriots deliver footballs inflated to the lowest possible pressure, 12.5 psi, to the referees, who use a different gauge and measure something below 12.5 psi, or perhaps the referees locker room is at a lower temperature and the pressure inside the footballs drops below 12.5 psi. Whatever the reason for the decrease in pressure, the referees decide to inflate any underinflated footballs to the middle of the range. And your further positing that the referees locker room attendant (i.e., McNally) might observe the referees pumping up the balls and so decide to deflate them on the way out to the field. According to the Wells report, the referee (Anderson) only pumped up two balls, and I could find no mention anywhere about whether he was observed by McNally while doing it. Of course it's a scenario that should be considered as long as it doesn't contradict other evidence, such as the AEI report demonstrating the unlikelihood that any deflation ever happened.Here's an interesting excerpt from the Wells Report:

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According to Anderson, other members of the officiating crew for the AFC Championship Game and other game officials with recent experience at Gillette Stadium, McNally had not previously removed game balls from the Officials Locker Room and taken them to the field without either receiving permission from the game officials or being accompanied by one or more officials.

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The "receiving permission" part and the "being accompanied by one of more officials" part are very interesting, because they're not actually in the NFL rules. The Wells report weaves a tale about officials never losing control of the balls in the past, but that doesn't align with the NFL rule book. All it says is that the footballs are under the supervision of the referees until they're turned over to the locker room attendant, nothing more. Here's the exact wording:

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The Referee shall be the sole judge as to whether all balls offered for play comply with these specifications. A pump is to be furnished by the home club, and the balls shall remain under the supervision of the Referee until they are delivered to the ball attendant just prior to the start of the game.

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Now maybe the referees had developed more rigorous procedures that had become their habit, but the rules say nothing about providing permission or accompanying the footballs to the field, and that wasn't the procedure the Patriot locker room attendant was familiar with. The Patriot report, The Wells Report in Context, makes that very clear.The Wells report was written in a way that implies the existence of rules that in actuality do not exist, and it then accuses the Patriot locker room attendant of violating them. It was a report commissioned by the NFL to tell the story the NFL wanted to hear. This year's rule changes regarding football security make clear how lax the NFL rules were regarding the handling of footballs, and one need only look at the old rule I quoted above and compare it to the new rules to understand this is so. Yes, he was only joking, and yes, of course he can tell differences in ball pressure, but only when the pressure difference is around 2 psi or more (Belichick ran experiments with the quarterback crew). But you seem to be arguing that having a preference is some kind of evidence. It's not. It's innuendo, and all the NFL did was create a big a pile of innuendo that they tried to pass off as evidence. If innuendo is evidence, then here's Phil Simms quoting Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay's quarterback:

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I like to push the limit to how much air we can put in the football, even go over what they allow you to do and see if the officials take air out of it.

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So if stating that you like a pressure outside the range in the NFL rules is evidence of tampering, then the NFL should go after Rodgers. I'm sure if they examine all the text messages from last season of a dozen cell phones and interview dozens of people that they should have no trouble building a case. When it comes to the NFL, the slimmer the evidence the easier it is to weave a fantasy.But I think my earlier points rule out the possibility of tampering. Jastremski set ball pressures to around 12.8 psi until that October Jets game, and 12.6 psi after. These are the pressures Brady used for both practice and games. Brady would never practice with lower pressure balls during the week, or play with lower pressure balls on game day. It makes no sense that he would want unfamiliarly low pressure balls on game day, and the 8 home games would be the only time he'd have a chance of slipping low pressure footballs into games anyway. My own view is that McNally's responsibility was to make sure to tell the referees the desired pressure, and to attempt to stand nearby so he can let a referee know when he's set a football to the incorrect pressure.I don't know if an analogy to a sport other people are unfamiliar with will help, but anyway, I'm a tennis player. It's fun to hit with old balls (could be from yesterday or from last week or last month) because you have more time to prepare (they've lost pressure and lose more speed after the bounce) and you can hit them harder and they'll stay inside the court. Any good tennis player will have several old cans of balls in his bag just for something to pull out for the odd occasion, like arriving before anyone else and so pulling a few old balls out of the bag to hit some practice serves, or to hit against the wall (new balls come back off the wall too fast to be useful for practice (unless you're working on reaction time rather than strokes) and so old balls are better).But for rallying with someone across the net from you, even if it's just practice (in fact, especially if it's practice), it's important to use new balls because that's what you'll be using in a match, and you don't want to get used to the bounce and timing of old balls. If you've practiced with old balls then when you step onto the court for your match, which will be played with new balls, the first thing you'll notice is that the ball is almost by you before you can get your racket back.Anyone who's reached a high level in any sport should find it very difficult to believe that Brady would want anything as critical as football pressure to be different on game day from what it was during practice.In related news, the Patriots have submitted a formal request to the NFL for the reinstatement of Jastremski and McNally. Many people mistakenly interpret their indefinite suspension as an implicit admission of guilt by the Patriots, but in fact their suspension was ordered by the league in a letter from Troy Vincent to the Patriots organization.--Percy

See NFL will reinstate Patriots employees John Jastremski and Jim McNally.Also, Patriots employees won’t face additional discipline from NFL.They're to meet with NFL VP of Football Operations Troy Vincent to discuss their roles, which will not involve the "preparing, handling or supervision of the team's game balls." Since this a team issue, rather than a player issue, I don't think there is any appeal about the restrictions.Rumor has it that McNally's replacement has chosen the nickname "The Drainer." --Percy

In the wake of Berman's deflategate ruling and of headset communication problems at Gillette Stadium during the 2015 season's first game, additional complaints about Patriot cheating have been lodged in the media. Latest among them came from former NFL official Mark Baltz, a head linesman from 1989 to 2013. In an interview on WTHR this week he had this to say:

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"He always asked for the footballs way, way before he was supposed to get them. If he could get them 10 or 15 minutes before he was supposed to get them, instead of the usual two minutes before the game -- and there were some crews that let him do that -- he would do it. I wouldn't let him take them early, and I think he eventually figured that out because he stopped asking after a while. I probably did 10 to 15 games up there [in Foxboro] and those first few times, he'd always ask. I always thought it was very suspicious. He certainly acted in a suspicious manner."

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I don't know where the "usual two minutes before the game" comes from. It is not in the NFL rules, which state:

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The Referee shall be the sole judge as to whether all balls offered for play comply with these specifications. A pump is to be furnished by the home club, and the balls shall remain under the supervision of the Referee until they are delivered to the ball attendant just prior to the start of the game.

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Baltz says he reported McNally to the league office:

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"[McNally] was always worried about the footballs. Always. It was very odd. I reported him to the league, but never got any reaction from them. I don't think they thought it was a big deal at the time. But [McNally] did things that 31 other locker room attendants don't do."

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But former NFL supervisor of officials Jim Daopoulos provides a different story. Daopoulos was an NFL official for 11 years up until 2000, and a supervisor of officials (there are more than one at any given time, but I don't know how many) for 12 years until 2011. In an interview on Comcast SportsNet he had this to say:

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"In all my years working with locker-room attendants, Jim McNally, without a doubt, is probably one of the most professional of all the locker-room attendants in the National Football League," Daopoulos said. "And that can be attested by all the officials working in the National Football League. I really don't know what Mark's agenda is right here."
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"There [were] questions (raised by Baltz) about [McNally] playing catch on the sideline with Tom Brady. Was that against the rules? No. There [were] no specific guidelines about what a locker-room attendant could or could not do. [McNally] had a sideline pass. He could go anywhere on the field."

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Play catch with Brady? What? If delivering the footballs to the field represented the end of McNally's duties for a while, one can understand his eagerness to get the footballs onto the field if it meant he might be able to play catch with Brady or otherwise hobnob with the team before they got down to the serious business of playing the game.Many sportscasters in New England believe there was something rotten going on, that Jastremski and McNally did conspire to and did actually deflate footballs, and many even believe Brady was involved. Most of the objections here are that the punishment was way out of proportion to the offense.But where is the evidence for football deflation? AEI's analysis points to errors in Exponent's analysis in the Wells Report, and correcting those errors concludes that likely no football inflation occurred (Exponent has a history of producing reports favorable to those paying them, see DeflateGate: NFL Hired Same Research Firm That Denied Secondhand Smoke Causes Cancer). The only evidence is suspicious text messages between Jastremski and McNally.So we're expected to believe a conspiracy to deflate footballs existed where:

• No one has admitted to deflating footballs.
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• No one witnessed anyone deflating footballs.
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• No one witnessed McNally with inflation needles or pressure gauges.
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• Jastremski and McNally developed this scheme and carried it out over at least several months (after the Jets game and possibly before), but never discussed it or mentioned it to anyone, since no one has ever come forward with stories of Jastremski or NcNally telling them, either in person or in email or via text, what they were doing with football pressure.
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• Analysis of halftime football pressures leads to the likely conclusion that no deflation happened.

Human communication, particular in contexts of familiarity, often involves inside humor, sarcasm, exaggeration, etc. The certainty some have of the precise meaning of the Jastremski/McNally texts ignores this. If the football pressures unequivocally led to the conclusion that football deflation happened then the culprits could only be Jastremski and McNally, since they're the only ones with motive and opportunity. But there would still be no hard evidence that they did it, and no evidence at all that Brady was involved. But forget all that, because the football pressure evidence says the opposite, that deflation likely didn't happen. Which makes sense, since if it did happen there would be more hard evidence that it did.The level of evidence for deflategate rises to the same level as most conspiracy theories: a bunch of innuendo constructed around ambiguous and incomplete evidence.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

The NFL has requested an expedited hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals 2nd circuit, and the NFLPA has concurred. The timeline looks like this:

• October 26, 2015: NFL files its opening brief
• December 7, 2015: NFLPA files its brief in response
• December 21, 2015: NFL files its brief in response
• February 1, 2016: Judges hear arguments

Some might have heard about Craig Carton's claim on WFAN radio that he'd been informed by a "very influential person in the NFL" that Brady would absolutely serve his four game suspension this season. Obviously that's impossible.--Percy

In his podcast Ep. 2: DeflateGate, President Trump & MLB W/JackO Bill Simmons discusses Deflategate with JackO, aka John O'Connell, a very knowledgeable and articulate fan from Connecticut. Simmons comments on something I've seen no other commentator comment on, the inadvisability of turning over one's cell phone to the NFL:

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Simmons: "Someone could write a great book about the media and just how this story was covered from start to finish, how things were swayed a certain way. The big lesson here is just get out early with whatever narrative you want to push, and that's the narrative people believe. The narrative that came out of this, because it was reported and so it had to be true, by people like Chris Mortenson who finally deleted the tweet but never retracted his report was that all of these balls were significantly underinflated, and it was 11 of the 12 balls and this stuff. And when people see that on a ticker, and they see it reported and talked about, and talked about ad nauseum on all the different sports channels, they assume it's true.

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"Well, it turned out not to be true. And what's funny is people still think it's true.

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"So then the second time it happens was in July, it comes out that Brady destroys his cell phone. And then it's, 'Omigod, wow, he destroyed his cell phone? What?' They leak it out. Stuff's getting leaked out left and right by the NFL.

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"Which is, by the way, one of the reasons you would never want to turn your cell phone over...like would you turn your cell phone over to the NFL?"

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JackO: "No. The NFL could give them an opportunity to have his lawyer review it and then turn over relevant texts or emails from their..."

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Simmons: "Right, but they never...they never..."

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JackO: "The could have been kept private, presumably."

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Simmons: "They never told him it was going to be like a factor. They never told him it was actually, you know, matter in this whole thing, and he changes his phone, whatever. There's no way he's turning his phone over to the NFL. That place leaks stuff left and right. Nobody would ever do that."

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In his career Brady has earned over $162,000,000 from just football alone, and that doesn't include endorsements. Security is essential where that much money is concerned, and the NFL is not secure. As I said often in this thread, Brady should have under no circumstances turned his phone over to the NFL.--Percy

The NFL has filed its brief in the expedited appeal of Judge Berman's ruling overturning the NFL's four game suspension of Patriot quarterback Tom Brady for deflating footballs in last January's AFC championship game between the Patriots and the Colts.The NFL requested, and the NFLPA agreed, an expedited appeal, and it will take place on Monday, February 1, 2016. If Berman's ruling is overturned, Brady would begin serving his four game suspension in his very next game. Most likely that won't be until next season, but it isn't inconceivable that it could be the Super Bowl, played just six days later.In requesting an expedited appeal the NFL knew it could affect the Super Bowl. It's like Goodell has it in for his own league. "How could I make my management of the league look as idiotic as possible?" Goodell asked himself, and evidently found an answer.The brief is 143 pages long - it will take me a while to work through it.--Percy

Oft forgotten in the Deflategate controversy is that no direct evidence that the Patriots deflated footballs was ever found. Many have noted that there *was* evidence, and that though it was circumstantial, there's nothing wrong with circumstantial evidence.But the circumstantial evidence of deflated footballs was evidence only in the same way that sea shells on mountain tops are evidence for a global flood: evidence only if you're a ninny and willing to ignore reams of other evidence and knowledge.Michael McCann, professor of sports law at UNH, conducted a three hour Deflategate course covering all aspects. It included the scientific aspects, covered by John Leonard, professor of engineering at MIT, Michael Briggs, professor of physics at UNH, and Martin Wosnik, professor of marine science also at UNH. The Boston Globe published a brief article about the course: At ‘Deflategate’ class, scientists let the air out of the NFLRoger Goodell is determined to punish Tom Brady for something that all the evidence says never happened.--Percy

--Percy

The NFL recently revealed that they *have* been measuring the pressure of footballs at halftime of random games, just as they said they would, but that they will not be making the data public. Of course not.The data up to this point wouldn't be very interesting, except for games on very hot days in the south, but now that we're in the fall season with dropping temperatures it would be nice to see the data from places like Green Bay, Minnesota and New England. With that data we would also witness the NFL's reaction as it gradually dawns on them that temperature really *does* affect the pressure of footballs.--Percy

NFL reportedly checks PSI of Patriots’ footballs, reports a local paper. The pressures were checked before the game, at halftime, and after the game. I think the game time temperature was in the 40's dropping into upper 30's.I watched the game and resumption of play after halftime was not held up, so the referees were more expeditious than those who measured the football pressures at halftime during the infamous Colts/Patriots AFC championship game last year that started deflategate.The NFL will not be making football PSI information public. Hopefully it will become public somehow, and if/when it does I expect we will find that NFL procedures for measuring football pressures are flawed. I won't speculate at the specifics of how they are flawed, but given that NFL is ignoring that footballs given different amounts of time to warm or cool will change pressures by different amounts, we can be fairly sure they're flawed. Brady's legal team should subpoena the results for the March hearing.--Percy

Scott Zolak, a local TV/radio sports broadcaster and former Patriot backup quarterback, tweeted that the referees for Saturday's Patriots/Chiefs game forgot the kicking balls and pressure gauges back at their hotel. They needed an escort to retrieve them from the hotel in time. I'm not a Twitter user and haven't seen the tweet. Anyone use Twitter?As far as I know no one else has reported or confirmed this, but local talk radio had a good laugh.--Percy

According to the Boston Globe, the NFL may release football PSI data between the Sunday championship games and the Super Bowl.Whenever they release the data, they should also reveal more details about the process. We still don't know if their new process reflects an understanding that footballs take time to reach ambient temperature.--Percy