Deflategate
[5][6] The controversy remained a topic of discussion during the season, which concluded with the Patriots winning Super Bowl LI and Brady being named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the game.
[15] The American Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game for the 2014 season was played on January 18, 2015, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, home of the Patriots, who hosted the Colts.
On January 27, an anonymous league source stated that the investigation was focusing on a Patriots locker room attendant who was seen on surveillance video taking the 24 game footballs (12 from each team) into a restroom for approximately 90 seconds.
[35]Ian Rapoport released a report February 1 citing anonymous league sources who indicated that amongst the 11 of the 12 footballs used in the first half judged by the officials to be under the minimum PSI, just one was two pounds under, while "many" were just a few ticks under.
The Patriots even submitted an amicus brief on behalf of Brady, who filed a federal lawsuit against the league to overturn his suspension, straddling the line between NFL stakeholder and whistleblower.
[36][37] Ryan Grigson, speaking at the 2016 NFL Combine, stated that "prior to the AFC Championship Game, we notified the league about our concerns that the Patriots might be using underinflated footballs".
[38] The claim also contradicts NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent's statement that Grigson notified the league "during the second quarter of the game".
[citation needed] After four months of waiting, the NFL published a 243-page investigative report[16] that alleged that it was "more probable than not" that the Patriots' equipment personnel had deliberately circumvented the rules.
[16]: 75 The Wells Report relied on scientific analysis performed by the Exponent consulting company and supported by Dr. Daniel Marlow, a Princeton University physics professor.
The logo gauge was shown to be inaccurate (running high) but consistently precise, and therefore the report claimed it as additional confirmation that the non-logo measurement was correct (with the exception of Colts ball #3, below).
[49] On May 14, attorney Daniel L. Goldberg prepared a document rebutting specific charges made in the Wells Report,[50] citing Nobel Prize-winning scientist Roderick MacKinnon, who has financial ties to Kraft.
[55] On August 19, 2015, New York Law School professor and self-described Patriots detractor Robert Blecker posted an article "DeflateGate: The Smoking Gun" in which he looked at pictures in the Wells Report and concluded that they had been deliberately staged to make the referee's recollection about which gauge was used appear less reliable.
It noted that with the more generally agreed timing assumption of the Colts' balls having been tested at the last minute, the Exponent experimental simulation data was consistent with believing the referee.
[59] On August 31, writing an op-ed piece for WBUR-FM, Professor Blecker explained that the NFL and Exponent had been deceptive regarding crucial evidence and that it was most likely that the Patriots had not cheated.
The op-ed mentioned that the "expert accusers" (Exponent) ignored the effect of the balls having remained in the bag on game day and linked to Young's website[60][61] for further proof.
[62] On December 14, 2015, Blecker filed an amicus curiae brief accusing the NFL of being "infected with bias, unfairness, evident partiality and occasional fraud.
On November 25, 2015, MIT professor John Leonard posted a lecture on YouTube titled "Taking the Measure of Deflategate" in which he explained why the Exponent portion of the Wells Report contained technical failures that led to an incorrect conclusion that footballs were deflated.
Moreover, the report documents your failure to cooperate fully and candidly with the investigation, including by refusing to produce any relevant electronic evidence (emails, texts, etc.
), despite being offered extraordinary safeguards by the investigators to protect unrelated personal information, and by providing testimony that the report concludes was not plausible and contradicted by other evidence.
Despite submitting to hours of testimony over the past 6 months, it is disappointing that the Commissioner upheld my suspension based upon a standard that it was "probable" that I was "generally aware" of misconduct.
[92][93]Kraft stated at a news conference that "I was wrong to put my faith in the league" and apologized to the team's fans for accepting the "harshest penalty in history of NFL for an alleged ball violation" because he thought that cooperating would help exonerate Brady.
The emails, beginning in February 2015, show the Patriots' frustration over the NFL's failure to investigate the source of leaks that were proven to consist largely of incorrect information.
"[99]This, along with other issues raised, led Wetzel to ask "how does anyone in the NFL – owner, coach, player or fan – possibly trust the league office to investigate and rule on anything ever again?
[4][110] Circuit judge Barrington Daniels Parker, Jr., joined by Chin, wrote that they could not "second-guess" the arbitration but were merely determining that it had "met the minimum legal standards established by the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947.
"[111] Circuit chief judge Robert Katzmann dissented, writing that the NFL's use of fines for using stickum was "highly analogous" and that here "the Commissioner was doling out his own brand of industrial justice.
After the reports emerged before the completion of the NFL's investigation, several media outlets had already called for Belichick–or even the entire Patriots team–to be disqualified from participation in Super Bowl XLIX.
"[140] On January 24, 2015, Saturday Night Live parodied the scandal in a cold-open sketch with Beck Bennett as Bill Belichick and Taran Killam as Tom Brady.
Naqi later aired a report on ESPN's Outside the Lines in which she interviewed an Indianapolis-based former referee who claimed that NFL officials had been "aware" of McNally for years and had raised concerns about him.
[154] Another revelation revealed by Florio was that NFL general counsel Jeff Pash ordered that the records of all PSI data gathered from the 2015 season, which contained readings that would have exonerated the Patriots, be deleted.
Leaked transcripts revealed that the NFL Senior Vice President of Football Operations, Dave Gardi, used false numbers in his letter to the Patriots which ordered that the team was to be investigated.
