NFL in ANY game is like 85 car accidents in an hour...there is NOTHING that will help you hold on to the ball when you don’t actively protect it. This is another hopeful angle by the Pats haters.
You can prevent a fumble by getting the officials to reverse it by invoking the Tuck Rule. It’s been done before.
So, if deflated footballs are so advantageous to the offense, how come it took 75 years until the first NFL team complained about it?
Everyone was obeying the rules?
Yeah, right.
And, before each play, at least one referee touches the ball. So, until this game, not one ref gripped a deflated ball for 75 years.
Yeah, right.
And you would likewise expect a perennial Super Bowl contender to have a low fumbles per game ratio.
Roger Goodell makes I think about $40 million per year running the NFL. Almost daily we see the results of his leadership failures with politically correct promotions and nonsense like pink attire, Super Bowl halftimes featuring lefty singers, banning Rush Limbaugh from having ownership, and the list goes on. When is this guy accountable for anything?
Unwarranted assumption alert...
Is that assumption correct? If it is not then the while issue is moot.
Bell, RB from the Stillers was the number 2 runner this past year and had ZERO fumbles, while the cowgirls number 1 RB murray had SIX fumbles.
Based on normal distribution, according to random fluctuation, both running backs should have had three fumbles each.
Did Bell from the Stillers cheat?
Wow! A data scientist, you say?!
I think this ‘data scientist’ should ask Stevan Ridley about fumbles and Belichick’s method of dealing with them...
Then he should compare his football IQ against Belichick’s stool sample and develop a theory why his is lower...go Pats!!
Or maybe Bellichek has far less tolerance for RBs or receivers who tend to fumble, even if very effective, otherwise.
Let me tell you what happens when you fumble a ball on a team coached by Bill Belichick.
After the game, Belichick has the trainers strip you down to a naked state and they shave every hair on your body below the neck. They then force you into women's clothing, complete with six inch heels. Then you have a heart shaped tattoo put on your back with the word "fumbler" underneath in pink cursive ink. You then have to spend the next few days shashaying around the locker room offering your "services" to the other players and singing over and over again in a falsetto voice "I'm a fumbler and that's okay, I tumble all night and I fumble all day..."
Once you get three fumble tattoos, you are off the team permanently.
After undergoing that rite of humiliation, you might better understand why so few Patriot players fumble the ball.
Ugh! My brain has never been wired to understand probability and statistics—it switches off just like when I try to read an IRS publication! All I can say is I watched the Pats crush the Colts, and it seems to me that 1-2 psi difference in the footballs could not possibly account for the Colts’ abysmal performance. Add 7 or even 14 points to their score and you still have a convincing win for the Pats.
I think the Pats will beat the Seahawks, but then we almost turned off the Seattle-Green Bay game because it appeared to be sown up. I’m not putting any money on it, but will enjoy the heck out of what I hope will be a good game. That’s what makes the game so exciting: the seemingly impossible sometimes happens. As a long time Bills fan, I know you don’t shut the game off until it is officially over—as illustrated by Buffalo’s 30+ point comeback against Houston years ago.
I don’t know if the Pats cheated or not. My understanding is that the investigation is ongoing. They may get fined or lose a draft pick, but as for the Super Bowl none of that matters. The balls are handled differently, and the whole world will be watching. It should be a heck of a contest!
It’s not a coincidence. Not turning the ball over is one of the fundamentals of their training and games. They’ll let you complete 10 passes on a drive and turn the ball over. RBs get benched for NEAR fumbles, and for fumbles they recover...and they spend a lot of time on drills with a cord attached to the ball or players run between lines of players trying to punch out the ball.
Not random at all.
There is a fundamental flaw in this analysis. It assumes that fumbles are randomly distributed.
When there are skill factors on both sides (causing and preventing), the base distribution is certainly not normal, for any team.
Why is there even a rule for PSI in the ball? Let the teams pick their own PSI and win or lose on that! What an F’n dumbass rule.
Fell apart right near the beginning: Based on the assumption that fumbles per play follow a normal distribution,
Fumbles per play do NOT follow a normal distribution curve. Some players are more prone to fumbling, some coaches are more prone to allowing sloppy play that makes the team more prone to fumbling, some coaches put more work into having the defense practice forcing fumbles which not only means their opponents fumble more it means their offenses generally fumble less. Fumbles are NOT random events and do not distribute accordingly. Fumble recovery does tend to be random, but that’s not until after the fumble.