how much did Tom Brady and the Patriots practice with deflated footballs?

[dyna mo]

Obviously, to deflate the balls to cheat means they had to know that was an advantage for Brady and each and every one of his receivers and ball carriers. This is professionall level football and preparation is key, the key.

so they must have prepared an awful lot to 1) have knowledge that that deflated balls work for everyone to an obvious statistical advantage and 2) also must have prepared for the 2014 NFC Championship game practicing with deflated balls.

How much time away from their practice with a properly inflated ball did they take?

[dyna mo]

nothing eh.


that's right because the smartest guy in football's NFC championship game strategy would not be based on something that is unproven and unpracticed.

go pats!

[dyna mo]

maths:

could the weather have played a role in "Deflate-Gate?"



To answer this question, let's begin with a little equation you may or may not remember from chemistry or physics, back in high school. It's called the Ideal Gas Law:

pV=nRT
where p is pressure, v is volume, n is the number of moles of a gas, R is the Universal Gas constant, and T is temperature.

Remember, what we do to one side of the equation, we have to do to the other side as well. For example, if we increase the pressure (p), then the temperature (T) would have to increase as well. That also means that a change in volume (V) would mean a change in temperature.

We make the following assumptions, based on what we know about the procedure regarding regulation footballs in the NFL and about the Ideal Gas Law:

1) V, the volume of gas (air) in the ball should not change, since (according to procedure), no air is added to or subtracted from the ball after reaching the proper inflation,

2) n will not change for the same reason as above,

3) R does not change, since it is a universal constant.

Now, let's just change the way the equation looks by moving all the letters to one side of the equation:

pV/nRT = 1
From here, we need to think of this as two different times: the pressure, temperature, etc. from when the balls were checked and the pressure, temperature, etc. out on the field. Let's set those to be equal:

p1 V1 / n1 RT1 = p2 V2 / n2 RT2,
where the 1 represents the initial readings and 2 represents the readings on the field. Since the volume will not change (assuming no air is added or taken away from the ball), then V1 = V2, and those can be cancelled. For the same reason, n1 andn 2 can cancel. The R 's cancel, since R

is a constant. We are left with a simple equation:

p1 / T1 = p2 / T2
Now, we can start solving this puzzle quite easily! But before we do, we also have to know the atmospheric pressure during the game, since p in this case is the absolute pressure; the pressure inside the ball plus the pressure of the atmosphere (which exerts a force on the ball as well).

At 6pm, the atmospheric pressure at nearby Norwood Airport was 1009.5 mb (1009.5 hPa or 100950 Pa).

Let's assume that each ball was inflated to the minimum pressure required to meet the NFL rules regarding proper inflation: 12.5 psi. We convert psi (English) to pascals (Metric), which comes out to 86,184.5 Pa and assume a room temperature of 68ºF (20ºC) which converts to 293.15 K (Kelvin, the Metric equivalent). We now have,

(86,184.5 Pa + 100950.0 Pa) / 293.15 K = (p2 + 100950.0 Pa) / T2.
We're down to two variables. But we also know the temperature on the field at the start of the game was reported as 51ºF/10.6ºC (283.15 K). Plug it in...

(86,184.5 Pa + 100950.0 Pa) / 293.15 K = (p2 + 100950.0 Pa) / 283.15 K
Neat! Look, we're left with a solvable equation with one variable, p2, which is the pressure of the air inside the ball at game time! Let's solve this riddle...

Isolate the lone variable:

{[(86,184.5 Pa + 100950.0 Pa) / 293.15 K] * 283.15 K} - 100950.0 Pa = p2
79,800.9 Pa = p2 ---> 11.8 psi
83,244.6 Pa is 11.8 psi,

so, according to these calculations, the balls could have been under-inflated by 0.7 psi on the field, just due to the change in temperature from inside to outside. This makes sense given the very first equation, which shows that a decrease in temperature would force a decrease in pressure, assuming the same volume of air in the football.



Deflate-Gate: Could weather have played a role in deflated balls?

[PR_Glen]

does your math equation include the part where every single quarterback in the nfl has a ball condition preference? if they overshot by a pound or so of the 'accepted pressure' would it have changed anything?

[dyna mo]

Originally Posted by PR_Glen

does your math equation include the part where every single quarterback in the nfl has a ball condition preference? if they overshot by a pound or so of the 'accepted pressure' would it have changed anything?

it's a formula, it shows that a temp change creates a pressure drop. it doesn't matter where the pressure initially was, it would drop by ~20% in only an hour if the temp change was only 10 degrees.

[kane]

Here's my thought:

Was it the weather that caused them to deflate? No. The reason I say this is that once it was reported and they started looking into it I would assume they would have also checked the Colt's balls to see if the same effect had been had on them and so far we are not hearing that their balls were deflated. Also, there are games played in cold weather just about every week in the NFL, but you never hear about this in any of them.

Did the deflated balls play a role in the Pats wining? No. Blount alone ran the ball 30 times for around 150 yards and 3TDs. That was enough to beat the Colts. Perhaps the Pats might have scored a little less without the deflated balls, but they still would have crushed the Colts.

Did Brady know? I agree with Troy Aikman who says he had to know. He approves the balls before the game and unless he gives the order nobody is going to touch them.He also handles the balls all game long and all practice long so he would notice if they were deflated.

What this comes down to, in my eyes, is an attempt a cheating that really didn't need to be done. This is not the first time the Pats have been caught trying to break the rules to get a competitive advantage. If the NFL rules that they did in fact knowingly deflate the balls there should be some serious penalties.

[2MuchMark]

ZZZzzzz

Football Physics And The Science Of Deflategate | Popular Science

[hadden]

Originally Posted by dyna mo

Obviously, to deflate the balls to cheat means they had to know that was an advantage for Brady and each and every one of his receivers and ball carriers. This is professionall level football and preparation is key, the key.

so they must have prepared an awful lot to 1) have knowledge that that deflated balls work for everyone to an obvious statistical advantage and 2) also must have prepared for the 2014 NFC Championship game practicing with deflated balls.

How much time away from their practice with a properly inflated ball did they take?

One could argue Sammy Sosa might have trained with a a real bat, albeit I admit that's somewhat different. Your argument floats in my world, they probably exclusively used what gave them the advantage, and Sosa too for that matter. Who knows though. Everyone cheats, apparently.