What level of cheating, if any, DOES fit the facts?

Fencer · Jul 29, 2015

There's no plausible way Brady et al. are guilty of what the NFL and media are implying, by which I mean a well-organized and repeated scheme to lower ball pressure illegally with the assistance of Jastremski and/or McNally between the time the referees measured the football and the time they were put into play. Some key reasons are:

By the NFL's own evidence -- as recently as last October, Brady was yelling to have the PSI rules followed, not circumvented.
The supposedly soft football at a regular season Colts game was at a ROAD GAME.
McNally's bathroom trip at the AFCC was, according to the Wells Report, unprecedented.
The measurements at the AFCC show that if there was any PSI-related attempt to cheat that night, it didn't work.

So what cheating or quasi-cheating COULD there have been?

McNally could have tried some stuff, with or without Jastremski's help or direction, in response to whatever he thinks Brady did or didn't say or do.
Brady could have learned about whatever happened from Jastremski right after the AFCC, and covered it up.
At home games only, McNally could have stuck in a needle when he was alone in the referee's locker room shortly before the game, with the AFCC bathroom trip being an attempt to do the same thing in a different venue.
BB said that the Pats' ball prep inflated the pressure of balls before the game. One could say that this led to low pressure when the balls were actually used and that, although this didn't violate the letter of the rules, it violated the spirit. One could further hypothesize that Brady anticipated this consequence.

I'm not aware of any of these four possibilities being precluded by the evidence. I'm also not aware of any reasons they'd be precluded by human nature.

But even if they were all true, none of them would come close to justifying the severity of the punishments. And of course nothing at all could excuse the NFL's egregiously dishonest behavior throughout this mess.

Joker · Jul 29, 2015

I'm an old dog. I've seen it all in this society since the JFK assassination. The one thing that just jumps out at me is, with Jastremski and McNally, two veritable PEONS in this olympian battle of the Gods, there has been exactly ZERO reaching out by either person to be witnesses for the persecution...er...prosecution. What reason would they have to NOT rat Brady out at THIS juncture?

It's a giant puzzle. Perhaps Kessler has already deposed them and will have them TESTIFY in a REAL COURT OF LAW. Perhaps Kessler will swear in Walt Anderson, whereupon HE will testify in a COURT OF LAW with real perjury ramifications, that he measured those balls with the proper NFL gauge. Kessler says "Mr Anderson, in your long career have you EVER used the non logo gauge as suggested in the Wells report?"...if the response is no then "cell phone destroyed!!!" in essence , has no meaning whatsoever. The testimony ofr Jastremski, McNally and Walt Anderson under oath in federal court will bodyslam the NFL and Goodell for the count...again.

VectorPrime · Jul 29, 2015

IF there was any deflation involved at any point in a game there is absolutely no way Brady didn't know about it. The ball boys would not do that on their own initiative.

Not saying there ever was deflation. But if it happened Brady knew.

At this point my personal theory was that Brady DID know about and condone deflation BUT only in an effort to get the balls down to 12.5 PSI. He was clearly aware of the legal range, having chewed out the refs about it before. Having encountered times where the refs just pump up the balls without actually caring about the measurements Brady probably at some point went to Jast and went "look, the refs keep fu.cking me. Do what you need to do to make sure that when the balls get on the field they are at the level I want." And Jast goes "sure no problem" and that's the last they ever need to talk about it. This wasn't some huge conspiracy, it was a casual request inspired in large part by the NFLs total lax rules regarding the balls. He probably considered it the football equivalent of jaywalking, which it basically was. And so Jast and McNally had their mandate, and make a habit of checking the balls after the refs handle them and deflating them down to 12.5 if need be. It would explain why there was no deflation in the AFCCG. Brady never wanted the balls deflated below legal levels and since the refs did their jobs, McNally didn't have to deflate anything in the bathroom. And it explains the whole deflator nickname.

Now the huge problem is that at this point NOONE on earth will believe this story because its the perfect cover of technically breaking the rules but not actually cheating. If Brady came out the day after the AFCCG and said that he had in the past told the ball boys to make sure that the balls are always at his legal level because the refs constantly messed them up then maybe this would have gone away because one could rightly argue that no cheating actually occurred and that Brady was being forced to correct a wrong. But he couldn't do that because of Mort's false readings combined with a complete lack of awareness of the ideal gas law. Basically Brady and the team didn't know what to make of the under pressure balls and panicked. Imagine being in his place, he knows he had never ordered them to be set under pressure, yet here they were, illegally underpessure. He had no idea if maybe Jast and McNally had fu.cked up and taken too much air out of the balls, and he didn't want to incriminate himself by saying he was aware that was a possibility. So he decided to deny everything. And that was the fatal mistake he made. Within a week he was screwed because the story became a national scandal and he couldn't explain what had even happened and certainly couldn't back off from his initial claim of ignorance. Now especially today there is no chance in hell of this defense working, or frankly even being attempted, because he'd have to backtrack all his lies about never being involved at all.

I believe that the incorrect Mort report, combined with the, at the time, inexplicable depletion of airpressure due to the weather, forced Brady to feel that he needed to deny everything because he could not explain why the balls were the way they were. After all he knew he didn't cheat. But by doing so he screwed himself. And there is no going back from that.

Deus Irae · Jul 29, 2015

VectorPrime said:
IF there was any deflation involved at any point in a game there is absolutely no way Brady didn't know about it.

That is simply assertion. It's certainly not factually accurate.

TommyD4207 · Jul 29, 2015

Considering that there was nothing that demonstrates that the footballs were tampered with in any way - I can't say any level of cheating fits the facts.

Could things have gone down exactly like the league says? Sure, they could have. Also, aliens could have descended onto Earth, possessed the bodies of Jastremski and McNally, used their magic alien powers to deflate the footballs, and yet still have them fall inside the range of the IGL.

Both scenarios are equally plausible considering the facts that exist.

NashuaPats · Jul 29, 2015

Cheating? Goodell and his minions taking down a HOF QB. There is a truckload of facts to support that.

There are zero facts that Brady cheated hence the made up controversy over his phone.

ViperGTS · Jul 29, 2015

It takes some big brass ones to take Brady on. People say he won't fight, that he will settle. The one thing that I'll always remember about Brady are his eyes at the LOS. So focused. So intense. Fairly terrifying I think. That person, will not back down. There is zero evidence that he cheated. Or was privy to anything bordering that.

Brady will take them on no matter the outcome. You don't make those passes in the Super Bowl and get crunched .03 seconds after release time and time again because you back down. No, the NFL picked a junkyard dog to tangle with.

As an aside, with Pedro being inducted into the HoF, it makes me realize how much I miss watching him pitch. Maybe I didn't appreciate him quite as much as I do now. This whole scandal is denying fans the ability to watch in peace the last few years of the greatest QB to ever set foot on the gridiron.

pdangle · Jul 29, 2015

VectorPrime said:
IF there was any deflation involved at any point in a game there is absolutely no way Brady didn't know about it. The ball boys would not do that on their own initiative.

Not saying there ever was deflation. But if it happened Brady knew.

At this point my personal theory was that Brady DID know about and condone deflation BUT only in an effort to get the balls down to 12.5 PSI. He was clearly aware of the legal range, having chewed out the refs about it before. Having encountered times where the refs just pump up the balls without actually caring about the measurements Brady probably at some point went to Jast and went "look, the refs keep fu.cking me. Do what you need to do to make sure that when the balls get on the field they are at the level I want." And Jast goes "sure no problem" and that's the last they ever need to talk about it. This wasn't some huge conspiracy, it was a casual request inspired in large part by the NFLs total lax rules regarding the balls. He probably considered it the football equivalent of jaywalking, which it basically was. And so Jast and McNally had their mandate, and make a habit of checking the balls after the refs handle them and deflating them down to 12.5 if need be. It would explain why there was no deflation in the AFCCG. Brady never wanted the balls deflated below legal levels and since the refs did their jobs, McNally didn't have to deflate anything in the bathroom. And it explains the whole deflator nickname.

Now the huge problem is that at this point NOONE on earth will believe this story because its the perfect cover of technically breaking the rules but not actually cheating. If Brady came out the day after the AFCCG and said that he had in the past told the ball boys to make sure that the balls are always at his legal level because the refs constantly messed them up then maybe this would have gone away because one could rightly argue that no cheating actually occurred and that Brady was being forced to correct a wrong. But he couldn't do that because of Mort's false readings combined with a complete lack of awareness of the ideal gas law. Basically Brady and the team didn't know what to make of the under pressure balls and panicked. Imagine being in his place, he knows he had never ordered them to be set under pressure, yet here they were, illegally underpessure. He had no idea if maybe Jast and McNally had fu.cked up and taken too much air out of the balls, and he didn't want to incriminate himself by saying he was aware that was a possibility. So he decided to deny everything. And that was the fatal mistake he made. Within a week he was screwed because the story became a national scandal and he couldn't explain what had even happened and certainly couldn't back off from his initial claim of ignorance. Now especially today there is no chance in hell of this defense working, or frankly even being attempted, because he'd have to backtrack all his lies about never being involved at all.

I believe that the incorrect Mort report, combined with the, at the time, inexplicable depletion of airpressure due to the weather, forced Brady to feel that he needed to deny everything because he could not explain why the balls were the way they were. After all he knew he didn't cheat. But by doing so he screwed himself. And there is no going back from that.

Many salient points. I've reached many of these same conclusions. To me, if one were to analyze this from the perspective of basic tenets of human nature, social pressure, known external forces, and the plausible outcome of their complex interactions to form a probable scenarios, this summary definitely is a top contender satisfying ol' Occam's Razor. I.E. The simplest explanation is usually correct.

All this from one conversation, where TB said something like, "Please guys, could you do your best to make sure we get the balls at 12.5? Thanks."

Fencer · Jul 29, 2015

Deus Irae said:
That is simply assertion. It's certainly not factually accurate.

I'm with you on that.

If there was an organized plan, it was remarkably shoddy by Patriots standards.

The closest to guilty I can easily imagine Brady being is:

1. "Who will rid me of this meddlesome PSI?" innocence, followed by ...
2. ... learning about how the PSI were being sporadically dumped after the AFCC, and deciding to cover it up.

It's not that I can't imagine Brady being guiltier than that as a person. It's just that I don't see any more damning theory as being supported by the evidence.

letekro · Jul 29, 2015

Fencer said:
There's no plausible way Brady et al. are guilty of what the NFL and media are implying, by which I mean a well-organized and repeated scheme to lower ball pressure illegally with the assistance of Jastremski and/or McNally between the time the referees measured the football and the time they were put into play. Some key reasons are:

By the NFL's own evidence -- as recently as last October, Brady was yelling to have the PSI rules followed, not circumvented.

The supposedly soft football at a regular season Colts game was at a ROAD GAME.

McNally's bathroom trip at the AFCC was, according to the Wells Report, unprecedented.

The measurements at the AFCC show that if there was any PSI-related attempt to cheat that night, it didn't work.

So what cheating or quasi-cheating COULD there have been?

McNally could have tried some stuff, with or without Jastremski's help or direction, in response to whatever he thinks Brady did or didn't say or do.

Brady could have learned about whatever happened from Jastremski right after the AFCC, and covered it up.

At home games only, McNally could have stuck in a needle when he was alone in the referee's locker room shortly before the game, with the AFCC bathroom trip being an attempt to do the same thing in a different venue.

BB said that the Pats' ball prep inflated the pressure of balls before the game. One could say that this led to low pressure when the balls were actually used and that, although this didn't violate the letter of the rules, it violated the spirit. One could further hypothesize that Brady anticipated this consequence.

I'm not aware of any of these four possibilities being precluded by the evidence. I'm also not aware of any reasons they'd be precluded by human nature.

But even if they were all true, none of them would come close to justifying the severity of the punishments. And of course nothing at all could excuse the NFL's egregiously dishonest behavior throughout this mess.

Finally, out of the wilderness, comes a reasonable post. Understandably, people are blinded by the ridiculously unfair and disproportionate punishment, but that doesn't mean that ball shenanigans were not going on. Were such ball shenanigans definitely proven? Of course not. But some of JJ and Bird's explanations for the texts (not to mention the Patriots' absurd weight-loss explanation) are tough to swallow (btw, these actual explanations of the parties involved differ dramatically from the often plausible explanations offered by some posters here). The only person who could've cleared this up was Brady, but he (upon advice of counsel) decided to go into stonewall mode. First, he clammed up about the substance of the numerous conversations that he had with JJ after the news broke. Then, he (through the NFLPA) claims that he has no responsive texts, but, of course, only after he disposes of the phone so that claim can never be tested in court. One thing the NFL is right about, is that his behavior gives rise to an inference of wrongdoing.

patsfan13 · Jul 29, 2015

The science says the balls weren't tampered with PERIOD ENDOFSTORY.

Clonamery · Jul 29, 2015

letekro said:
Finally, out of the wilderness, comes a reasonable post. Understandably, people are blinded by the ridiculously unfair and disproportionate punishment, but that doesn't mean that ball shenanigans were not going on. Were such ball shenanigans definitely proven? Of course not. But some of JJ and Bird's explanations for the texts (not to mention the Patriots' absurd weight-loss explanation) are tough to swallow (btw, these actual explanations of the parties involved differ dramatically from the often plausible explanations offered by some posters here). The only person who could've cleared this up was Brady, but he (upon advice of counsel) decided to go into stonewall mode. First, he clammed up about the substance of the numerous conversations that he had with JJ after the news broke. Then, he (through the NFLPA) claims that he has no responsive texts, but, of course, only after he disposes of the phone so that claim can never be tested in court. One thing the NFL is right about, is that his behavior gives rise to an inference of wrongdoing.

Which effing media member (as in ****) are you? Your numb nuts behavior gives rise to an inference of ridiculous posturing.

RobertWeathers · Jul 29, 2015

For me, only thing that fits is TB12 could have verbally told the guys to take more air out of them regardless of what was measured by Anderson as it was a damp night and TB12 wanted a little better grip.

McNally takes the balls, goes to the can, spends approx 9 seconds (140 seconds - 30 for setup and putting balls back in the bag) per ball. He does not measure the air pressure. McNally takes so little air out, the predicted PSI as defined by the IGL still says that it was in range.

I create this scenario in my mind then common sense takes over which is something clearly the NFL lacks.

QuantumMechanic · Jul 29, 2015

patsfan13 said:
The science says the balls weren't tampered with PERIOD ENDOFSTORY.

The science says the balls weren't tampered with in the AFCCG.

I'm with VectorPrime and Fencer on this. I think Jastremski and McNally hatched a scheme to deflate balls down to 12.5 PSI (but no further) if the refs left them over 12.5 PSI. Since the refs did their job in the AFCCG and left things at 12.5 PSI, J & M had no need to do anything and therefore did nothing. But because of the Mort lie and no one initially understanding the impact of the IGL Brady couldn't say anything beyond denial because he either truly knew nothing or because he didn't understand what was going on because all he ever intimated is that he wanted things at 12.5 PSI and the balls were (to him) inexplicably lower.

Why did J & M start doing this? Either because (as Fencer said upstream) Brady made a "Will no one rid me of these meddlesome PSI" remark or because they completely did it on their own because they got tired of Brady chewing out their azzes about balls being too hard.

patsfan13 · Jul 29, 2015

QuantumMechanic said:
The science says the balls weren't tampered with in the AFCCG.

I'm with VectorPrime and Fencer on this. I think Jastremski and McNally hatched a scheme to deflate balls down to 12.5 PSI (but no further) if the refs left them over 12.5 PSI. Since the refs did their job in the AFCCG and left things at 12.5 PSI, J & M had no need to do anything and therefore did nothing. But because of the Mort lie and no one initially understanding the impact of the IGL Brady couldn't say anything beyond denial because he either truly knew nothing or because he didn't understand what was going on because all he ever intimated is that he wanted things at 12.5 PSI and the balls were (to him) inexplicably lower.

Why did J & M start doing this? Either because (as Fencer said upstream) Brady made a "Will no one rid me of these meddlesome PSI" remark or because they completely did it on their own because they got tired of Brady chewing out their azzes about balls being too hard.

BS Brady wanted the balls at 12.5 not a halfassed attempt to willy nilly deflate balls to some arbitrary level.

Big-T · Jul 29, 2015

Cheating that has been found with facts:
Jacksonville Jaguars personnel witnessed Colts staff with ball inflation needles on the sideline during a game.
Indianapolis Colts staff used a needle on a Patriots Football in the AFCCG.
Bill Leavy inflated Patriots Footballs to 16 PSI in a game against the New York Jets, Leavy since "retired" after the release of the Wells report and this information.

QuantumMechanic · Jul 29, 2015

patsfan13 said:
BS Brady wanted the balls at 12.5 not a halfassed attempt to willy nilly deflate balls to some arbitrary level.

Did you actually read what VectorPrime and I wrote? Not arbitrary at all! Both VectorPrime and I said that the plan, if it existed, would be to deflate balls down to precisely 12.5 PSI if the refs pumped them up from the 12.5 PSI the Pats submitted them at.

PatSunday · Jul 29, 2015

There was definitely tampering going on. But I'm not sure why the story is about the Patriots.

It's undeniable that the Colts created a plan to measure both team footballs despite the rules against it since 1) that's what they immediately with the first intercepted ball and 2) they mentioned their suspicions prior to the game. Since they worded it similar to "Patriots are known to deflate footballs", this "knowledge" came from the Colts equipment staff themselves -- the only team known to measure footballs in the game. Clearly, they've been measuring footballs for many years trying to figure out why Colts keep losing and Patriots are the best team at home, but the ball boys did not know the air pressure changed so much in a cold and rainy football game. In fact, not even experienced coaches, league officials, referees, and media did.

The Colts are hurting the NFL, not Goodell or Kraft. Kraft should not have had to apologize and step back to "avoid hurting the NFL."

chasa · Jul 29, 2015

When the guy accused of deflating the balls willing sits down and talks with investigators THE NIGHT OF THE GAME with no lawyer or representitive, and doesn't give up anything, its probably a good bet that hes either a genius level sociopath, or no wrong doing happened.

JMC00 · Jul 29, 2015

Big-T said:
Bill Leavy inflated Patriots Footballs to 16 PSI in a game against the New York Jets, Leavy since "retired" after the release of the Wells report and this information.

Yep conveniently retired on May 13th and now will work at the league offices in a supervisory role within the league’s officiating department.

Ya that's not suspicious.

What level of cheating, if any, DOES fit the facts?

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