The simple story behind the entire "deflategate" controversy

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

or,

My Occam’s razor explanation for deflategate.


The Occam’s razor principle is used to identify a likely explanation for an otherwise mysterious outcome that has many other possible explanations. It largely relies upon the idea that a series of events fitting with common sense and consistent with human nature, but also fitting with all of the known facts, is more likely to be true than are significantly more complicated explanations. This is especially true when alternative explanations require highly improbable events to occur, or when they rely upon behavior that is far out of character for the people who are involved in the mystery.

I have applied this sort of logic to the “deflategate” controversy and the following is what I think happened (and yes, this is speculation on my part).

We begin with the playoff game between the Patriots and the Ravens. It is a cold weather game, in fact it is about 20 degrees at kickoff. Shortly before halftime the Ravens defense intercepts a Tom Brady pass. John Harbaugh, or another Ravens coach, asks that the football be kept and “looked at”. Why? We don’t exactly know. Paranoia, perhaps? At an opportune moment, likely at halftime, the Ravens' equipment guy, after being asked to do so, measures the air pressure in the football (even though this act is illegal). The reading is 10 psi. The Ravens are puzzled, not understanding that a football that had been pumped to 12.5 psi at 72 degrees will, BY THE NATURAL LAWS OF PHYSICS, drop in pressure about 2.5 psi due to a temperature drop of over 50 degrees on this very cold day. Such a pressure drop happens without any human involvement.

The Ravens equipment guy exclaims “This football is at 10 psi, coach Harbaugh! Wow! It’s supposed to be at 12.5 psi! The Patriots must be cheating!” Harbaugh also doesn’t understand the relevant science, but he has the pressing need to focus on making adjustments for the second half.

So coach Harbaugh says “Well, that’s nice, but we’re in a dogfight here, up 21-14. There’s a lot more football to be played, so let’s control what we can control.” Thus Harbaugh does not act on the low football pressure news.

The second half is marked by two Patriot comebacks and a 35-31 victory. Harbaugh is angered by one particular tactic of the Patriots, the use of offensive formations that employ eligible/ineligible receivers, players adopting field positions that are inconsistent with their jersey numbers, unless they first report to the refs (which they had done). Harbaugh voices his displeasure over the tactic in his pointed postgame remarks. Tom Brady then replies “Well, maybe he should read the rule book!”

Harbaugh is FURIOUS at Brady’s flippant remark.

Now move forward a few days. The Colts are preparing for the Patriots. Their GM Ryan Grigson, their coach Chuck Pagano, and the Ravens coach Joan Harbaugh are friends and former co-workers. Grigson (or Pagano) calls up Harbaugh for any and all helpful advice. Harbaugh goes over game strategy and the Patriots weaknesses, making many helpful game plan suggestions. Then at some point, recalling Brady’s rule book zinger, he says almost as an afterthought “Hey, there’s one other thing, guys. We think that the Patriots do something funny with the footballs, deflating them a little. We picked off a football and checked it out. It was below the pressure specs, by a lot!”

Grigson and Pagano also don’t understand the relevant science. Their hatred for the Patriots even exceeds that of Harbaugh’s, though. Grigson was a Ram in 2001 (they lost in the Super Bowl to the Patriots), an Eagle in 2004 (they lost in the Super Bowl to the Patriots), and a Raven after that, through many fierce playoff and regular season battles with New England. Pagano was on the Ravens staff too. Grigson and Pagano decide that Harbaugh’s claims demand action. They know just what to do: they will contact a high-ranking NFL executive named Matt Kensil. Why Kensil? He is the son of a previous New York Jets president who was jilted by Bill Belichick when the coach resigned after being named the Jets head coach in 2000. Kensil was a Jets employee through much of the 2000s. His dislike for the Patriots was no secret. Better yet, as an NFL game day operations official, he was in a position to not only listen to grigson and Pagano, he might even be able to do something about it!

Kensil assures Grigson and/or Pagano that “I will be ready, if the Patriots try to pull that kind of stunt this week”. He instructs Pagano to hold onto any Patriots footballs whenever possible, and “then we’ll see what they are up to”. This overall plan to catch the Patriots red-handed is Kensil’s. He does not involve the on-field game officials in this plan. This detail explains why the on-field game officials are not meticulous in, for example, logging pregame football pressure measurements. They don’t normally do that, so they also don’t do it for the AFC championship game.

The grand opportunity for Kensil, Grigson, and/or Pagano arises with a Colts interception late in the first half. The Colts player collects the souvenir and gives it to their equipment guy for safe keeping. Grigson or Pagano sends word to the equipment guy: “Hey, you need to check the pressure in that football, because the Patriots may be up to something!”

The Colts equipment guy pulls out a needle and pressure gauge. He measures the pressure as 11.4 psi! He thinks “Yes, we are onto something! It should be 12.5-13.5, right?” He runs to Grigson and says “this ball is deflated!”

Grigson wants to see it for himself. The Colts equipment guy measures the pressure as 11.3 psi. Note: every time that you test the pressure, some air escapes the football to pressurize the gauge itself, so the drop from 11.4 to 11.3 is normal. However, the drop from 12.5 psi to 11.4 psi is also normal, given the temperature of 48 degrees at halftime, 20-25 degrees warmer than the temperature at which the footballs were inflated indoors. But again, Grigson slept through the “PV=nRT” lecture in high school and is oblivious to that. He thinks “if the pressure dropped, any, then somebody—THE PATRIOTS! — must have let air out of this football!

Grigson finds Matt Kensil and passes on the word “WE’VE GOT THEM!” Kensil also wants to see it for himself. He measures the pressure as 11.2 psi! “Yes, we have them dead to rights! The footballs are supposed to be 13 psi, plus/minus 0.5. This one is almost 2 psi lower than 13!”

Kensil takes the news to the head on-field game official at halftime, who is very upset that Kensil has measured the pressure of a football, which is something that is simply not allowed. He snaps “We are the only ones who are supposed to do that!”

Still, Kensil presses the main point, that in his opinion a partially deflated football was used in the game. He insists “We need to check the pressure of all of the game footballs!”

Kensil (or more probably the official) checks the other Patriots footballs. They are all in the range of 11.3-11.5 psi, except one that is at about 12 psi. Kensil (or the official) exclaims “Wow… we do have them! All of these footballs are supposed to be 13 psi, plus/minus 0.5. They are all low, and all but one is at least 1 psi lower than the minimum!”

Kensil and/or the official do not realize that BY THE NATURAL LAWS OF PHYSICS the footballs will have dropped in pressure over 1 psi by the 20-25 degree temperature drop, without any human involvement. 12.5 psi becomes 11.4 psi, without a single molecule of gas taken out!

Kensil (or the official) then inflates the Patriots footballs up to 13 psi, thinking that he is doing the right thing. “After all, we can’t let them cheat in the second half!”

Kensil (or the official) then checks the Colts footballs. They are all 12.4-12.5 psi, right at the minimum specs. “Aha, LEGAL! Wow… the Colts are clean!” Kensil (or the official) does not know that these footballs had originally been inflated to 13.5 psi by another game day official, per the Colts' instructions. They just knew that they had been approved to start with. BY THE NATURAL LAWS OF PHYSICS all of the footballs would have dropped in pressure by over 1 psi due to the 20-25 degree temperature drop, without any human involvement. Over the first half, in other words, for the Colts footballs 13.5 psi becomes 12.4 psi, without a single molecule taken out! Yes, Mother Nature treated all of the footballs, on both sidelines, exactly the same way. They did not start out at the same pressure, however. The Colts footballs began at 13.5 psi, the Patriots footballs began at 12.5 psi (except for one outlier, one that was at 13 psi or so, the one that was still close to specs at halftime). Both sets of footballs had been legal, but they began at opposite ends of the legal pressure range.

All of the footballs are now 100% legal for play, to everyone's satisfaction. The head referee reminds Kensil that measuring football pressure is to be left to the on-field game officials. Still, it was time for the second half kickoff, with no time for an argument. Having in-spec footballs, the head ref decides “Let’s go!”

The Patriots run roughshod over the Colts and the game becomes a blowout. Kensil, Grigson, and owner Jim Irsay (whom Grigson had informed about the news, after halftime) are dejected. But… they are NOT going to let the Patriots “get away with it” even in a blowout win. They were still not aware that Mother Nature was the only football depressurizer that day, other than the people who illegally checked the pressure in the footballs, especially the intercepted ball, and multiple times.

(edit: I cleaned up a few things)

 

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

(continued)

Jim Irsay simply can’t contain himself. “We’ve got the Patriots red-handed” he thinks. “Could the outcome of the game be overturned? Well, even if that does not happen, the Patriots will be smeared by this, and good!” Kensil, a high ranking NFL executive, agrees and encorages Irsay and Grigson to press the issue, as he talks with his NFL co-workers.

Without delay, it was time for Irsay (or Grigson) to call up the Indianapolis reporter Bob Kravitz. “We are going to absolutely blow the lid off of this thing!”

Kravitz happily obliges. The lid is indeed blown off. ESPN begins coverage 24/7. There is lead story coverage on all of the major TV news networks. CNN leads their world news coverage with a “deflategate” feature.

The Patriots are dumbfounded. The morning after the game is the first time that they have even heard about the controversy. Belichick inquires of his people “What is going on?” He calls a meeting and they discuss what could have happened. Everyone who had anything to do with preparing the footballs is adamant that no tampering had occurred.

Ernie Adams, a Patriots numbers guy, possible savant, and Belichick confidant, then chimes in. He comments matter-of-factly “footballs will always lose pressure when they cool down. They also gain pressure when they heat up. That’s also true for a balloon that you buy at the grocery store on a cold day. That’s also true of the tire pressure in your car. That's science, folks. Maybe that is all that is going on here?” He then does the math. Or maybe it isn’t Ernie. Perhaps it is instead the ex-Stanford offensive tackle and aeronautics and astronautics engineering major Cameron Fleming, or the Patriots RPI-educated aeronautical engineer and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia. Someone, in any event, eventually says “Bill, at halftime it was 48 degrees outside. A football that is at 12.5 psi at 72 degrees, when cooled to 48 degrees, will then be at about 11.3 psi. That will happen every time, just by the pressure/temperature relationship. With the cold rain, the drop that you would see may even be more. What kind of pressure drop did they measure?”

Bill Belichick says “I don’t know what drop in pressure they saw. Nobody is saying. But… let’s go and try it. Let’s do this right, though. Let's go through our whole routine from the beginning, just like what we would do on game day, from how the footballs are initially selected, to how they are prepped, to pumping them up, and to bringing them outside on a cold day. Let’s see what happens”

What they found, what happened, and what always happens, is that a football that is cooled over 20 degrees drops in pressure by over 1 psi. It just does. Bill says “I am glad that you guys didn’t sleep through that ‘PV=nRT’ lecture in high school like some of us did!”

Still, the media frenzy continues unabated with 24 hour coverage. Respected football pundits brazenly deem Bill Belichick and especially Tom Brady to be liars and cheaters. This is apparently due to their shaky reliance upon reading body language. Kensil leaks inside information to members of the press, details that implicate the Patriots in wrongdoing but that later are shown to be either untrue or slanted. Perhaps Irsay helps with the media leaks too, still without understanding the underlying science.

In the end, though, to turn a favorite phrase of Bill Belichick, the science “is what it is”. What the French scientist Guillaume Amontons described in about 1700, what was later incorporated into what we call the ideal gas law, is still valid today. The "pressure drop with falling temperature phenomenon" is confirmed in universities, in high schools, in middle schools, even in some grade school science projects everywhere. Anyone with a football, a pump, a gauge, and a refrigerator can (and does) observe that, indeed, a football cooled over 20 degrees drops in pressure by over 1 psi. It just does.

But Roger Goodell had also slept through the PV=nRT lecture in high school. He doesn’t “get it” or at least he does not understand it well enough to ever begin to explain it to the public. He decides to bring in Ted Wells to investigate thoroughly.

Over more than 3 months Ted Wells reconstructs what I have described above. The investigation becomes complicated and prolonged in part because Kensil, Grigson, Pagano, Irsay, and Harbaugh are not eager to step up and confirm their roles in initiating and escalating the mess. But the pieces eventually all fall together. In the end, Ted Wells finds the truth.

The final conclusion of Mr. Wells: there is no evidence that the Patriots let any air out of footballs after they passed inspection. There was wrongdoing, however. There was no vast conspiracy against the Patriots, but there was indeed a trap of sorts, and it was set by Kensil and Grigson. They wanted to catch the Patriots in the act. What were their motivations? Well, they were not trying to make things up or even trying to “frame” anybody. They genuinely thought that they were on the trail of real wrongdoings, at first, even though they were not. Kensil, Grigson & co-workers were not driven by evil intent. Contributing factors, though, were an ignorance of the relevant basic science, intense paranoia, and a deep hatred for the Patriots.

What were the punishable misdeeds? There was mishandling of game day footballs on the part of Kensil, Grigson & co-workers, improper pressure measurement, improper football inflating, and in general behavior that circumvented the authority of the game day on-field officials, who were not involved in the operation. There was also a seedy but totally unrelated side story: a corrupt NFL employee was making money by selling charity footballs on the side. Then, very prominently, there were the multiple damaging and false leaks to the media, traceable mostly to Kensil.

What will be the outcome? One fallout is known: the charity football stealer was fired right away. Unknown, but expected, is that the Patriots will be exonerated. After the Wells report comes out, though, there will be many more loose ends to tie up. Kensil will be fired for his multiple instances of circumventing the authority of the game day on-field officials and especially for the false information that was leaked to news media. Grigson, Pagano, and Irsay will get a very stern lecture from Goodell. The Colts organization will get a fine for working with Kensil secretly and for not sharing their suspicions with other, more neutral NFL personnel. Harbaugh won’t come out looking great, but he’ll receive no fine. A mitigating factor is that he didn’t know that the Colts would jump on his remark about low football pressure, and he also didn’t do anything more than to provide the initial spark.

The Patriots will get their apology from the NFL, specifically for the damaging and incorrect leaks that were sourced to NFL employees and that wrongly smeared them before the Super Bowl. The apology will be well-deserved, for the Patriots did nothing wrong.

But a fried egg simply cannot be un-fried. The apology will not be discussed for weeks on ESPN. It will not be the lead story on all of the major news networks. CNN will not lead their world news coverage with “the deflategate apology”. The legions of Patriot haters, in the end, will conclude “I cannot believe that the NFL let them get away with it!” After all, haters are going to hate, facts or not.

(edit: I cleaned up a few things)

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

Kodos! This is precisely what I believe happened and will happen

 

[BradyManny]

Another winner PBPF. This is what I believe as well, though the specifics of how the Ravens-to-Colts stuff transpired, I think we can only guess at that, and my guess would be a little different. I'm most curious to see that stuff in the Wells report.

 

[The Gr8est]

If you are right then the punishments for the Colts and Ravens needs to be more significant than a fine. Draft picks must be forfeited, if not actually awarded to the Pats, who suffered tangible damage as a result of both of those teams' actions.

It could have even cost them the Superbowl if the game was played a week earlier.

 

[Ross12]

Very logical, sensible post. Probably very likely as to explain what happened. Hopefully the outcome is likely as well.

 

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

lol at the "dislikes"

Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Harbaugh.

 

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

A draft pick swap would be justified.

In the end though, I think the NFL will cut the Colts a break because it was a scheme driven more by ignorance and paranoia more than by malice.

 

[supafly]

lol at the "dislikes"

Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Harbaugh.

Looks like an obvious troll, PBPF. I wouldn't think twice about it.

 

[The Gr8est]

A draft pick swap would be justified.

In the end though, I think the NFL will cut the Colts a break because it was a scheme driven more by ignorance and paranoia more than by malice.

Was CameraPlacementGate malice by the Pats?

No team suffered from CameraPlacementGate what the Pats suffered from Deflategate. A less mentally tough team than the Pats may not have recovered.

 

[karguy85]

lol at the "dislikes"

Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Harbaugh.

It's annoying to see people "dislike" such a thoughtful post. Thanks for this PBPF!

 

[patsfan13]

Brilliant post and spot on. I would add one more point, it is very possible that NFL officials didn't bother measuring 48 Football pregame. They felt the balls and if they felt OK they were tossed in the bag, the process will be revised by the league due to the sting here, balls will be measured and pressure recorded and the teams will not get possession of the balls, they NFL will control to balls

 

[letekro]

This is the likeliest explanation. Well presented. Although, we disagree on the ultimate outcome.

 

[BradyManny]

WTF disliked this post?

 

[ctpatsfan77]

WTF disliked this post?

Click on the word "List" and you can see who did.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

One not-so-minor thing missing: the second sting operation involving the guy stealing the footballs.

 

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

I mentioned the guy stealing the footballs as a side element, near the end. I didn't include his firing in the punishments, because it is already a done deal (and likely is not connected at all to Kensil or anything to do with the pressure controversy).

 

[signbabybrady]

WTF disliked this post?

I would guess someone disliked it either because it is another deflate gate thread or because it's such a long post.

 

[chasa]

this didn't need yet another thread with theory crafting.

we know what happened, EVERYONE with half a brain knows what happened.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

(Ernie Adams, who hadn’t slept through the PV=nRT lecture in high school, then chimes in. He comments matter-of-factly that footballs will always lose pressure when they cool down.

I'm voting for Mike Patricia and/or Cam Fleming bringing it up rather than Adams.