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Two Cheers for the Patriots
The Weekly Standard ^ | Jan 28, 2015 | Jonathan Last

Posted on 01/28/2015 3:42:16 PM PST by vbmoneyspender

The 2015 New England Patriots ran 187 plays per lost fumble. Which, statistically speaking, is insane. This season's Patriots are such a black swan that, as data scientist John Candido explained to Sharp,

Based on the assumption that fumbles per play follow a normal distribution, you'd expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten over this period, once in 16,233.77 instances.

Which in layman's terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0000616 probability to win. Which in other words, [makes it] very unlikely that it's a coincidence.

It gets unlikelier still: After finding this outlier, Sharp went digging and expanded his search to the last 25 years. And when he ranked the teams, by season, by the highest number of offensive plays per lost fumble, four of the top six seasons recorded were by the Patriots. And the Patriots have led the NFL in the category in every five-year period since 2007.

This sort of thing doesn't happen by accident. It suggests that while the rest of the league was sleeping, Belichick was in his mad scientist laboratory looking for hidden points of leverage within the game and not only discovering them, but finding out a way to exploit them, too. Is this about deflated footballs? I very much doubt that 1.5 psi could account for such a gigantic disparity. In fact, Deflategate is probably the least likely explanation.

No, I suspect that what happened is that Belichick had the some stat-head do a big, Sabremetric work-up of football statistics and discovered that lost fumbles have a disproportionate impact on wins. And I suspect that after learning this, he made fumble rates a key metric in personnel decisions. And I suspect that he did further analysis on what types of plays are more likely to result in fumbles, and then altered his play-calling schemes accordingly. In short, I suspect that Belichick has been doing Moneyball in football without anyone else knowing it.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: nepatriots
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To: BluH2o

Ya might wanna go read the Dan Blandino press Conference from today…
The Refs never tested the PSI of the footballs prior to the game.
You can see it on line at bostonherald.com
So much for “perception”. But how about “Alarmgate”?
hmm?


61 posted on 01/29/2015 6:19:11 PM PST by acapesket
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To: acapesket
Belicheat and his accomplices, McDaniels, Brady and the (person of interest) ball guy won't have the opportunity to cheat in the SB Sunday. This will be the most scrutinized game for irregularities in SB history.
I'll be watching it in Las Vegas.
62 posted on 01/29/2015 7:49:51 PM PST by BluH2o
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To: duffee

A lot of folks got the science wrong because they didn’t include atmospheric pressure + the PSI of the ball above atmospheric pressure.

Article in NYT explains what scientist are saying. NFL is using Columbia Physics prof in their investigation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/sports/football/deflation-experiments-show-patriots-may-have-science-on-their-side-after-all.html?ref=football&_r=0

Additionally the NFL never recorded the PSI of the balls a pregame or at halftime. IOW no records of anything as per Blandino. No proof anything was done to balls.

My guess refs game the balls the squeeze test and allowed balls from both teams into game, then Colts did sting balls were adjusted and Patriots go out and out score Colts 28-0 in second half.


63 posted on 01/31/2015 4:52:20 AM PST by Leto
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To: BluH2o

And I will be watching it with fellow Patriots.
Hope we kick your buttocks two ways from Sunday.
Best wishes that you drown with Roger Goodsell and the National F League.
like Obama…the Peter Principle… on display for all of the world to see.
No Matter how the game turns out..
Goodsell…is just that.


64 posted on 01/31/2015 6:35:10 PM PST by acapesket
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