The Wells Report Delivered an Innocuous Bombshell that Few Noticed ~ hehe THIS is 4 ALL ya cool~aid drink~in tommy/billy/bobby ....frauds of ALLLLLL Time !!! Oops :o
by Warren Sharp
An innocuous bombshell was dropped in the Ted Wells Report on Deflategate which was overlooked by many, but which could be one of its most key findings.
My prior article on the Wells report having “uncovered the tip of the iceberg“, was in fact, an aptly named headline. As background, after the AFC Championship game, I immediately began to dig into the statistics to see if they told a story. Indeed, they did. As noted many times over, the Patriots became mysteriously fumble-proof in 2007. Their fumble rate took an immediate and distinct turn in their favor, and continued thru the 2014 season. It was completely atypical from any other team in the NFL. Running the numbers, the odds of it happening by chance were extraordinarily improbable. The data said something was not right.
Shortly after uncovering that finding, I learned troubling information regarding a 2006 rule change that allowed each team to provide the footballs their offense would use in every game, whether home or away. The rule itself was not the thing that was shocking, what was shocking was that Tom Brady was the champion of this rule change, along with Peyton Manning. Brady was quoted as saying “some [quarterbacks] like them blown up a little bit more, some like them a little more thin” and “there’ve been nights before road games when I have had trouble sleeping because I’m thinking about what kind of footballs I’ll be throwing the next day.”
The timing of this was quite peculiar. Almost immediately after this rule that Brady lobbied for was changed by the NFL, the Patriots no longer fumbled the football compared to the rest of the NFL.
Then, we skip ahead in time to the release of the Wells Report. As we know, the Wells Report released a lot of new information to shed light on what happened, and determined that is was “more probable than not that Patriots personnel participated in violations of the Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate effort to circumvent the rules”, and that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities involving the release of air from Patriots game balls.
As we all know, the report identified Jim McNally as the Officials Locker Room attendant. McNally gave himself the nickname of “deflator”, he was incentivized via money, clothing, tickets, etc., and he threatened to over-inflate the footballs multiple times in a joking manner, and said if he didn’t receive the bribes, the only thing that would be deflated would be Brady’s passer rating. He also threatened to go “to espn”.
In addition to a variety of other roles, McNally “obtains the air pump and pressure gauge from the equipment room after [John] Jastremski has finished inflating and adjusting the pressure in the Patriots game balls”, he then brings that air pump and pressure gauge “from the Patriots equipment room to the Officials Locker Room”, and he also then “plays a role in the transport of game balls on game day at Gillette Stadium.” This entails that he “carries the Patriots game balls from the Patriots equipment room to the Officials Locker Room a few hours prior to the game.” He also carries the game balls “from the Officials Locker Room to the field shortly before the start of the game” and “also generally brings the balls into and out of the locker room at halftime”.
But then came the innocuous comment from the Wells Report that would not really cause a second thought for anyone except myself and the now hundreds of thousands who have read thru these findings on the Patriots fumble rate:
To reemphasize: “The Deflator” has “held his current title since approximately 2007″.
The Wells Report seems to indicate that while McNally has not traveled
with the team on road games as much recently, he was corresponding with
Jastremski who was with the team on the road, via text messages,
instructing him to put into play deflated footballs (see pg 87).
From my prior articles, I’ve made it
abundantly clear how critical the year 2007 was to the findings.
By far, its the most important year. Everything changed for the
Patriots and their fumble rates in 2007. I was searching everywhere to
find the change. As I ended one of my prior articles (written 26Jan15):
“2007″,it
only appears twice. Once to mention that McNally became the liaison
with the officials and game balls in 2007, and once to state that the
rule enabling a team to control all of its game balls in every game has
remained unchanged since 2007.
Now, we can clearly see it laid out before our eyes with references to two key facts which play huge roles in this investigation:
The
data behind my analysis of this case has not changed since late
January. Since I came out with my findings, initial resistance to the
actual findings from a statistical standpoint have been overruled.
Respected websites with long standing records for being committed to
understanding data have agreed with my findings:
Brian Burke of Advanced Football Analytics studied my results after thinking that they were “so extraordinary they seemed unlikely to be true” but after he ran his own numbers, his conclusions as to the Patriots incredible ball security (aka lack of fumbling) was incredible, and their numbers are “better than the next best team by 20 plays per fumble.”
Benjamin Morris of FiveThirtyEight also studied my results and then ran his own. He concluded my study should be taken “more seriously” because “that author correctly identified that the Patriots fumble rate has been absurdly small. I did my own calculations using binomial and Poisson models and found the same.” His results suggest the odds the Patriots could fumble as infrequently as they did was over 1 in 10,000, whereas the next best team in the NFL was 1 in 800, and most teams were below 1 in 5, meaning most teams had fumble rates which were normal. Morris went on to conclude:
The “deflator” Jim McNally started operating in his role in 2007, right after the rule for the footballs was changed (in large part due to the efforts of Tom Brady), and immediately the Patriots became so fumble-proof it literally jumps off the page as so extraordinary that any good statistician has to catch their breath and run the numbers again because they are almost too absurd to be true.
As I’ve mentioned countless times, deflated footballs
(regardless of who deflated them or what their original intent was) are
more difficult to fumble. That much is completely evident in the data,
as well as being fairly common sense. Preventing fumbles is huge to
winning games in the NFL.
As the table to the right shows (click to enlarge), the team who wins the turnover battle wins 79% of all NFL games. It is the most critical statistic for success in the NFL. The Patriots are fortunate to be captained by Tom Brady, one of the most accurate passers of all time. As the table likewise shows, the Patriots have thrown the fewest interceptions in the NFL since 2007. As such, the primary way they can ensure they do not lose the turnover battle is to prevent fumbles. Which goes right back to the fact above, that deflated footballs are harder to fumble.
While much has been written and linked back to my primary two findings in my research, as well as my initial response to the Ted Wells report, learning that “the deflator” began his role within the Patriots starting 2007 (the exact time we began to see their fumble rate astronomically improve) was more than worthy of addressing. Because clearly, this tie is crucial and reaffirms (more than ever) what I said in January, that “something” happened just before the 2007 season. And it seems to show that the advantage of playing with deflated footballs was not limited to one game or one season, but may have extended all the way back to 2007.
An innocuous bombshell was dropped in the Ted Wells Report on Deflategate which was overlooked by many, but which could be one of its most key findings.
My prior article on the Wells report having “uncovered the tip of the iceberg“, was in fact, an aptly named headline. As background, after the AFC Championship game, I immediately began to dig into the statistics to see if they told a story. Indeed, they did. As noted many times over, the Patriots became mysteriously fumble-proof in 2007. Their fumble rate took an immediate and distinct turn in their favor, and continued thru the 2014 season. It was completely atypical from any other team in the NFL. Running the numbers, the odds of it happening by chance were extraordinarily improbable. The data said something was not right.
Shortly after uncovering that finding, I learned troubling information regarding a 2006 rule change that allowed each team to provide the footballs their offense would use in every game, whether home or away. The rule itself was not the thing that was shocking, what was shocking was that Tom Brady was the champion of this rule change, along with Peyton Manning. Brady was quoted as saying “some [quarterbacks] like them blown up a little bit more, some like them a little more thin” and “there’ve been nights before road games when I have had trouble sleeping because I’m thinking about what kind of footballs I’ll be throwing the next day.”
The timing of this was quite peculiar. Almost immediately after this rule that Brady lobbied for was changed by the NFL, the Patriots no longer fumbled the football compared to the rest of the NFL.
Then, we skip ahead in time to the release of the Wells Report. As we know, the Wells Report released a lot of new information to shed light on what happened, and determined that is was “more probable than not that Patriots personnel participated in violations of the Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate effort to circumvent the rules”, and that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities involving the release of air from Patriots game balls.
As we all know, the report identified Jim McNally as the Officials Locker Room attendant. McNally gave himself the nickname of “deflator”, he was incentivized via money, clothing, tickets, etc., and he threatened to over-inflate the footballs multiple times in a joking manner, and said if he didn’t receive the bribes, the only thing that would be deflated would be Brady’s passer rating. He also threatened to go “to espn”.
In addition to a variety of other roles, McNally “obtains the air pump and pressure gauge from the equipment room after [John] Jastremski has finished inflating and adjusting the pressure in the Patriots game balls”, he then brings that air pump and pressure gauge “from the Patriots equipment room to the Officials Locker Room”, and he also then “plays a role in the transport of game balls on game day at Gillette Stadium.” This entails that he “carries the Patriots game balls from the Patriots equipment room to the Officials Locker Room a few hours prior to the game.” He also carries the game balls “from the Officials Locker Room to the field shortly before the start of the game” and “also generally brings the balls into and out of the locker room at halftime”.
But then came the innocuous comment from the Wells Report that would not really cause a second thought for anyone except myself and the now hundreds of thousands who have read thru these findings on the Patriots fumble rate:
To reemphasize: “The Deflator” has “held his current title since approximately 2007″.
The Wells Report seems to indicate that while McNally has not traveled
with the team on road games as much recently, he was corresponding with
Jastremski who was with the team on the road, via text messages,
instructing him to put into play deflated footballs (see pg 87).From my prior articles, I’ve made it
abundantly clear how critical the year 2007 was to the findings.
By far, its the most important year. Everything changed for the
Patriots and their fumble rates in 2007. I was searching everywhere to
find the change. As I ended one of my prior articles (written 26Jan15):If you search the Wells Report for
The bottom line is, something happened in New England. It happened just before the 2007 season, and it completely changed this team.
“2007″,it
only appears twice. Once to mention that McNally became the liaison
with the officials and game balls in 2007, and once to state that the
rule enabling a team to control all of its game balls in every game has
remained unchanged since 2007.Now, we can clearly see it laid out before our eyes with references to two key facts which play huge roles in this investigation:
The
data behind my analysis of this case has not changed since late
January. Since I came out with my findings, initial resistance to the
actual findings from a statistical standpoint have been overruled.
Respected websites with long standing records for being committed to
understanding data have agreed with my findings:Brian Burke of Advanced Football Analytics studied my results after thinking that they were “so extraordinary they seemed unlikely to be true” but after he ran his own numbers, his conclusions as to the Patriots incredible ball security (aka lack of fumbling) was incredible, and their numbers are “better than the next best team by 20 plays per fumble.”
Benjamin Morris of FiveThirtyEight also studied my results and then ran his own. He concluded my study should be taken “more seriously” because “that author correctly identified that the Patriots fumble rate has been absurdly small. I did my own calculations using binomial and Poisson models and found the same.” His results suggest the odds the Patriots could fumble as infrequently as they did was over 1 in 10,000, whereas the next best team in the NFL was 1 in 800, and most teams were below 1 in 5, meaning most teams had fumble rates which were normal. Morris went on to conclude:
“the existence of the Patriots’ extremely low fumble rate, as a Bayesian matter, makes it much more likely that the Patriots were intentionally cheating… and more likely that the Patriots have materially benefited from their cheating.”I said the Wells Report uncovered the tip of the iceberg. When you line up independent analysis of the data vs facts in the Wells report, you suddenly are left with this unsettling fact:
The “deflator” Jim McNally started operating in his role in 2007, right after the rule for the footballs was changed (in large part due to the efforts of Tom Brady), and immediately the Patriots became so fumble-proof it literally jumps off the page as so extraordinary that any good statistician has to catch their breath and run the numbers again because they are almost too absurd to be true.
As I’ve mentioned countless times, deflated footballs
(regardless of who deflated them or what their original intent was) are
more difficult to fumble. That much is completely evident in the data,
as well as being fairly common sense. Preventing fumbles is huge to
winning games in the NFL.As the table to the right shows (click to enlarge), the team who wins the turnover battle wins 79% of all NFL games. It is the most critical statistic for success in the NFL. The Patriots are fortunate to be captained by Tom Brady, one of the most accurate passers of all time. As the table likewise shows, the Patriots have thrown the fewest interceptions in the NFL since 2007. As such, the primary way they can ensure they do not lose the turnover battle is to prevent fumbles. Which goes right back to the fact above, that deflated footballs are harder to fumble.
While much has been written and linked back to my primary two findings in my research, as well as my initial response to the Ted Wells report, learning that “the deflator” began his role within the Patriots starting 2007 (the exact time we began to see their fumble rate astronomically improve) was more than worthy of addressing. Because clearly, this tie is crucial and reaffirms (more than ever) what I said in January, that “something” happened just before the 2007 season. And it seems to show that the advantage of playing with deflated footballs was not limited to one game or one season, but may have extended all the way back to 2007.
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