Overwhelming Statistical Evidence Suggests The Patriots Are Cheaters

[Cali_Democrat]

For some reason the site isn't working, so I have the cached one

This is pretty damning IMO. Numbers don't lie.

As we all know by now, a deflated football is easier for the receivers and running backs to hang on to.

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http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.sharpfootballanalysis.com/blog/?p=2932

The New England Patriots Prevention of Fumbles is Nearly Impossible

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The 2014 Patriots were just the 3rd team in the last 25 years to never have lost a fumble at home! The biggest difference between the Patriots and the other 2 teams who did it was that New England ran between 150 and 200 MORE plays this year than those teams did in the years they had zero home fumbles, making the Patriots stand alone in this unique statistic.

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I spoke with a data scientist who I know from work on the NFLproject.com website, and sent him the data. He said:

Based on the assumption that fumbles per play follow a normal distribution, you’d expect to see, according to random fluctuation, the results that the Patriots have gotten over this period, once in 16,233.77 instances”.

Which in layman’s terms means that this result only being a coincidence, is like winning a raffle where you have a 0.0000616 probability to win. Which in other words, it’s very unlikely that it’s a coincidence.

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Could the Patriots be so good that they just defy the numbers? As my friend theorized: Perhaps they’ve invented a revolutionary in-house way to protect the ball, or perhaps they’ve intentionally stocked their skill positions with players who don’t have a propensity to fumble. Or perhaps still, they call plays which intentionally result in a lower percentage of fumbles. Or maybe its just that they play with deflated footballs on offense. It could be any combination of the above.

But regardless of what, specifically, is causing these numbers, the fact remains: this is an extremely abnormal occurrence and is NOT simply random fluctuation.

[KamaAina]

1. How many of those "150 to 200 MORE plays" were rushing plays?

What percentage of rushing plays did they run overall?

[opiate69]

2. Because fumbles don't happen on passing plays???

[KamaAina]

3. Not as often

Your Seahorses avvie is a dead giveaway.

[hughee99]

4. That's remarkable. The Patriots only lost 4 fumbles all season!

Of course, that was tops in the NFL (except for Minnesota, that lost only 2). Of course, those two teams were far and away at the top of the list with SD, ARI and Den with 5 fumbles lost.

But as you pointed out, they didn't lose a fumble at HOME all season, which is odd, because they get to use their own footballs on the road, too, which makes the numbers a little confusing.

I am curious about one thing, if "fumbles per play follow a normal distribution", how is it that Indy and Philly lost 15 fumbles each this season and Minnesota lost only 2? Did they run 7.5 times as many offensive plays as Minnesota? Dallas and the Giants each lost 14 fumbles, while New England, Denver and San Diego had 14 COMBINED? Does the NFC East have a much longer schedule than the rest of the league, which is why all 4 NFC east teams had more at least 13 fumbles while no one in the AFC east had more than 11? I think perhaps these numbers are based on a false premise. I'm not saying I don't think NE cheated, in fact I think they probably did, but this sort of statistical analysis is just horseshit.

[El Supremo]

5. Fumbleghazi!

Looks worse every day.

[madinmaryland]

6. I miss the old fumblerooski