“and if somebody knows it’s more catchable, it simply increases the confidence of the person making the play. “
Looking at Brady’s first half pass stats, he wasn’t very confident. Most of his passes were for less than 10 yards (including run after catch yards).
Well, that is true. The wetness heavily contributed to that. The coverage of deeper receivers on certain plays probably contributed some to that.
My point is that "Deflate Gate" in my opinion contributed HEAVILY to New England's 2nd TD.
Take away that TD, and Indy may not have fallen down 14-0 in first half...and would not have so readily abandoned its run game, which up until then was averaging 5 yards per carry.
In wet conditions, the run game is vital. I believe if Indy was down 7-0 instead of 14-0, it would have stuck to a roughly 40% run vs. 60% pass game. Instead, what we saw, once it became 14-0, was Indy to run only twice more the rest of the first half. Then down 17-7 at half -- versus say, 10-7 -- Indy went on to completely abandon the run...passing 10 of 11 times in 3rd quarter.
I'm not by any means saying Indy would have won the game. I am saying that it contributed a domino effect -- a "slippery" slope -- that made it basically impossible for Indy to even be in the game early in the second half.