Important Question regarding McNally

[VectorPrime]

Does anyone know if it has been confirmed whether McNally travels with the team on their away games? If he does is it known if he ever comes into position of the game balls? I'm doing some statistical research on fumbling rates at home vs away and need to know this.

 

[tombonneau]

No he only works home games. Don't waste your time on the fumble splits. The Pats will debunk this "since 2007 they never fumble ZOMG!" statistical myth this year.

(HINT: It's called playing RBs who don't fumble and having a QB with a fast release who doesn't get strip sacked often.)

 

[pjd1711]

He hasn't in the past 2-3 years, it is on page 42 footnote 22 of the Wells report.
"McNally‟s schedule has been l
imited to home games for the past two or three seasons. Prior to that, he would travel with the team to certain road games. He explained that he stopped traveling with the team when additional full-time personnel were added to the equipment staff"

 

[VectorPrime]

There is no arguing that Brady's fumble rate went way down after 2006. So I went year by year starting with 2007 for Brady's sack and fumble amounts. I only counted fumbles lost since getting them back is a complete crap shoot that means nothing here. I made separate counts for both home and away games including playoffs but not Super Bowls.

What I found was that at home Brady has been sacked 114 times and has fumbled 22 times since 2007. That comes out to a fumble rate of 5.18 % when sacked.

On the road Brady was sacked 85 times and has fumbled 17 times for a fumble rate of 5% when sacked.

So what this means is that at home, with control of the balls Brady has had a worse rate of fumbling then on the road without control of the balls. Since there has been absolutely no explanation on how the Patriots could have tampered with the balls on the road since McNally either wasn't there or didn't have custody of them then it must be assumed that the Patriots could only have tampered with the balls while at home. If that is the assumption then the fumble rates cannot be used as evidence to support tampering as the rate is nearly identical between home and on the road. In fact it's worse at home.If the argument is that Brady sought an advantage by tampering with the balls he clearly did not get one here.

(my numbers may be off because it's really late but I double checked everything so I think they are good)

I'm way too tired to do the fumbling totals for rushers and receivers at the moment. If someone wants to do that I'd be really grateful. I have a feeling the numbers will be comparable.