On Sunday, January 18th, in the AFC Championship game with the New England Patriots vs. the Indianapolis Colts, it was reported that 11 of 12 of the Patriots footballs were under the NFL’s required amount of PSI for each football, which is between 12.5 PSI and 13.5 PSI.
The media and football fans have been persistently looking for answers, specifically from Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, as to how the balls ended up being deflated.
Although it may seem like a small matter, deflated footballs can provide advantages in catching and gripping the ball, especially in wet and rainy conditions.
According to Tom Brady’s words in his press conference, he stated that he “didn’t alter the ball in any way,” and that he had “no knowledge of wrongdoing” that had taken place prior to the start of the game.
Bill Belichick also made similar claims, saying that he had “no explanation” as to how the balls became deflated. In a recent Boston Globe article, Belichick used science to explain as to how the balls could have become deflated by halftime.
“We found that once the footballs were on the field over an extended period of time, in other words, they were adjusted to the climatic conditions and also the fact that the footballs reached an equilibrium without the rubbing process, that after that had run its course that they were down approximately 1½ pounds per square inch.”
Despite the Patriots’ effort to prove that the cold weather conditions were the most probable reason for the deflation of the balls, Bill Nye the Science Guy has openly commented, outright declaring that his explanation “didn’t make sense.”
In the article “Bill Nye says Belichick is full of hot air (other scientists disagree),” Bill Nye “insisted that only an inflation needle could change the ball’s pressure” that quickly in such a small amount of time.
In that same article, a group of scientists agreed with Belichick’s claim, saying that it was possible for the PSI to drop in such a short amount of time with the temperatures and weather conditions at the AFC Championship game.
The scientists attempted to carry out their own experiment by recreating the same conditions and inflating new NFL standard footballs to the same pressure, to see if the balls would drop in pressure.
The scientists found that after inflating the balls in a controlled environment and letting them sit out for a few hours in a wet, cold environment, the balls all dropped in PSI. The most significant drop was 1.95 PSI, which proves that it was possible for the balls to deflate by 1.5 PSI.
Despite evidence and facts presented, the media has continually poked fun at the incident, and has not showed any sign of stopping.
Saturday Night Live aired a skit where actors reenacted the press conference where Tom Brady and Bill Belichick questioned who was really behind the deflation of the footballs. In the skit, it is implied that Tom and Bill know what really happened, and instead of taking responsibility they put the blame on others, which ends up falling on the team’s “assistant equipment co-manager.”
In the beginning of the skit, Bill Belichick shifts the questioning to Tom Brady by outright proclaiming that the only person that would know what happened to the footballs is Brady himself.
Tom Brady purposely acts dumb and oblivious to the situation, in his attempt to prove that he knew nothing about how the balls ended up being deflated.
Brady then turns the attention toward the team’s “assistant equipment co-manager,” calling him the “brains behind our entire operation.”
In spite of all the negative media attention, the Patriots have played exceptionally well to make it to the Super Bowl.
After the Super Bowl, the NFL will start a full-scale investigation to find out exactly who or what was responsible for the deflation of the footballs, but until then the fans and the media can only speculate what really happened.