A Last Look at NE's Fumbles

The recent debunking and de-debunking of the Patriots'  fumble numbers has taken a decidedly unscientific turn. The posts I've read seem to be "advocacy" research, not unlike research sponsored by Nabisco claiming that Oreos are good for you. Each side's biases and contortions aren't very hard to detect. I think that the possibility that the fumble rates may be connected to the current allegations warrants some fair-minded investigation. Some of the debunking has merit, but some of it does not. Whether NE appears to be a 4-sigma outlier or an 8-sigma outlier is beside the point. Without…

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Podcast Episode 44 - Brian Burke

Brian Burke is back for the final AFA podcast of the 2014-15 NFL season. Brian and Dave discuss the Patriots deflated ball controversy with a quick recap of high school physics before analyzing the key analytical storylines of Super Bowl XLIX.  They look at the potential role of football analytics in television broadcasts, break down the key matchups on both sides of the ball, beg listeners to go read some other website and not crash the AFA server, and finish up the show by predicting which team will be crowned the 2015 Super Bowl champion.

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The Patriots Have Incredible Ball Security

For whatever reason, the Patriots do have exceptional ball security, especially for an outdoors team. And I mean exceptional. 

I was intrigued by a link sent to me via Twitter at Sharp Football Analysis, a handicapping site. The article demonstrated that NE's ball security was an outlier to the tune of several standard deviations. The charts are convincing, and the implication is that NE benefitted from under-inflated balls is unmistakable. But I wasn't sure how much stock to put in the numbers for a couple reasons. One is that they were so extraordinary they seemed unlikely to be true. And…

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Deflate-Gate and PV/T=k

This Deflate-Gate controversy had me thinking about 9th grade chemistry and wondering about the effect of temperature on the balls. I saw that CAR kicker Graham Gano recently tweeted that he is often frustrated by how the balls naturally lose their air pressure when going from an indoor setting, where the inflation pressure is set and checked, to a cold outdoor setting. Could NE's balls have lost their pressure due to the temperature?

We'll need to dust off the Combined Gas Law to figure this one out. That's the physical law that says gas temperature, pressure, and volume are all related.…

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