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Bill Nye the science guy

Well, hey, statistics is a "science," too:

Deflate-gate triggers stat spat as analysts attempt to solve why Patriots don't fumble

Excerpt:

Maybe the smoking gun isn’t in a bathroom at Gillette Stadium. Maybe it’s in the laptop of a civil engineer in Washington, D.C. One of the strangest twists in the already strange saga of deflate-gate is the sudden star turn of a man who runs a gambling website when he’s not doing his day job. Warren Sharp is a 36-year-old dad who loves numbers and algorithms, and decided to apply some statistics to the Patriots when he heard about the football deflation investigation. What he found sent ripples through the sports world and got a few other statisticians pretty upset. It also may have implications beyond Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Sharp’s idea was to look at fumbles. That led him to a more refined topic: how well the Patriots held onto the ball both before and after the 2006 season, which happened to be the year Brady and Peyton Manning pushed for a rule change which allowed each team to provide their own footballs for games. “Something significant changed from 2006 to 2007 that allowed them to retain the football,” Sharp said by phone Tuesday, “and that continues today>”

According to Sharp’s calculations, the Patriots’ fumble rate was 42 touches per fumble from 2000 through 2006. That was about the league average. Since 2007, however, that rate has dropped dramatically, to 74 touches per fumble. Over that time, the Pats are the best team in the NFL at holding onto the ball, even including dome teams.

“Based upon the data we’ve collected and the probabilities, it definitely is extremely unlikely that their ability to hold onto the football would change so much and be as far away from the rest of the NFL,” Sharp said. “It’s extremely unlikely.”

So...2007 season is FIRST one teams supply own footballs, as lobbied for by Tom Brady.

Suddenly, their fumble rate which has been common to the rest of the league becomes...how shall I say it? Oh, deflated...

The Patriots' fumble rate improves almost 80%...
...And its kept there...
...Year in, year out...
...Doesn't matter which running backs and receivers they bring in...
...fumble rate doesn't roller-coaster...
...stays smooth as the Dead Sea on a windless day...

So...more "scientific research" needed...

Like...will the Patriots fumble more in SuperBowl now that they don't control the psi?

Since BOTH teams use the same pool of 8 footballs for punts, was the Patriot punt return and kickoff return levels 2007-2014 at around the same rate as the rest of the league? (Giving us another "happenstance hint"). Or, if the Pats were indeed so "talented" at holding onto the ball 2007-2014, that, of course, carried over to the special teams, right?

And if the NFL develops more oversight of footballs pre-game in 2015 season, will the Patriots return to 2006 fumble rates?

Of course, to Pats' fans, if that happens, that'll all just be a fluke, right...

A fluke of nature...

Btw, since a lower psi benefits not only RB not fumbling as much, but receivers catching the ball -- and in fact, a lower psi REALLY benefits the receivers and not so much the QB...my hunch was that the completion % of Brady would have been impacted significantly moving from the 2006 to 2007 season.

And, of course, I looked...and I was right:

Brady's completion % went from 61.8% in 2006 to a career-high 68.9% ... an 11.5% improvement in a single season!
Tom Brady: Career Stats

In fact thru 2006, Brady was consistently at 60%...61%..62%...63%

Then he gets his own footballs...

07: 68.9%
08: Injured
09: 65.7%
10: 65.9%
11: 65.6%
(he was back down in 12 & 13...getting older, ya know)
But in '14 was higher than any single season 2001-2006