That was then: Celebrating what was

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
37,054
Hingham, MA
Fuck Mortensen.
From the Mort has throat cancer thread a couple years ago:
Not snarky, but does throat cancer really sneak up on you like that? Surprised it's stage 4 prior to treatments, though I suppose it's possible he has been getting them to no avail.
That's a great question and one I can't answer. I'm clueless when it comes to throat cancer. For instance, I didn't even know you could get it from lying.
I've never laughed harder in the 15+ years I've been on SoSH. Yes I realize I am going to hell.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

Found no thrill on Blueberry Hill
SoSH Member
Sep 9, 2008
42,271
AZ
The deflate gate point that seems so absurd and I wish got more discussion is the which gauge problem.

One gauge registered higher results than the other. Walt Anderson said his “best recollection” was that he used the one that gave no statistically significant spread. Wells just decided he was mistaken. If I could have one point widely known, it would be that.
 

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
37,054
Hingham, MA
The deflate gate point that seems so absurd and I wish got more discussion is the which gauge problem.

One gauge registered higher results than the other. Walt Anderson said his “best recollection” was that he used the one that gave no statistically significant spread. Wells just decided he was mistaken. If I could have one point widely known, it would be that.
Speaking of "fuck that guy" - Walt Anderson. Fuck that guy even more than Mort in my book. He was too cowardly too speak up when he could have exonerated the Pats and Brady. Fuck that guy.
 

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
37,054
Hingham, MA
The deflate gate point that seems so absurd and I wish got more discussion is the which gauge problem.

One gauge registered higher results than the other. Walt Anderson said his “best recollection” was that he used the one that gave no statistically significant spread. Wells just decided he was mistaken. If I could have one point widely known, it would be that.
The point that I wish got more discussion is WHO CARES. You know why the NFL sets the PSI range at 12.5-14.5 or whatever the official range is? Because that's what it says on the box when you buy a Wilson football. Aaron Rodgers is on the record as saying he likes the balls inflated OVER the legal limit. Brady is on the record as saying he likes a softer ball. If you have the 2 greatest QBs of the last 10 years on complete opposite sides of the spectrum, doesn't that show how stupid the whole fucking thing is? DFG eventually turned into an opportunity for the NFL to give full control of suspensions to Goodell, over an "infraction" that literally provided 0.0% advantage. It's akin to the George Brett pine tar incident - the pine tar rule only existed so that balls didn't become blemished by pine tar because they were costly. It had nothing to do with competitive advantage.

I'm worked up again. Dammit.

Edit: Pine Tar explanation. Credit to MLB back in the day for not making this like DFG

The Royals protested the game. Four days later, American League president Lee MacPhail upheld the Royals' protest. In explaining his decision, MacPhail noted that the "spirit of the restriction" on pine tar on bats was based not on the fear of unfair advantage, but simple economics; any contact with pine tar would discolor the ball, render it unsuitable for play, and require that it be discarded and replaced—thus increasing the home team's cost of supplying balls for a given game. MacPhail ruled that Brett had not violated the spirit of the rules nor deliberately "altered [the bat] to improve the distance factor".
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
SoSH Member
Oct 1, 2015
24,369
I like how the article treats the ideal gas law as if it's still a mystery if it would actually apply to air in footballs.
To this day I still do this.... I live in NE like many of you and I know you've all experienced this. But when it gets cold out and my car's "low tire pressure" light comes on, if one of my kids is in the car I say, "Oh hey look, cold weather DOES impact air pressure". And if they're not in the car, I text them to say the same thing. They roll their eyes because of course they know what I'm referring to.

It always amazed me that anyone living in cold parts of the country wouldn't INSTANTLY realize how stupid DFG was, because everyone has had this cold weather/tire experience here in the northeast (and I'm sure in Wisconsin and Minnesota etc.).
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
SoSH Member
Oct 1, 2015
24,369
The point that I wish got more discussion is WHO CARES. You know why the NFL sets the PSI range at 12.5-14.5 or whatever the official range is? Because that's what it says on the box when you buy a Wilson football. Aaron Rodgers is on the record as saying he likes the balls inflated OVER the legal limit. Brady is on the record as saying he likes a softer ball. If you have the 2 greatest QBs of the last 10 years on complete opposite sides of the spectrum, doesn't that show how stupid the whole fucking thing is? DFG eventually turned into an opportunity for the NFL to give full control of suspensions to Goodell, over an "infraction" that literally provided 0.0% advantage. It's akin to the George Brett pine tar incident - the pine tar rule only existed so that balls didn't become blemished by pine tar because they were costly. It had nothing to do with competitive advantage.

I'm worked up again. Dammit.

Edit: Pine Tar explanation. Credit to MLB back in the day for not making this like DFG

The Royals protested the game. Four days later, American League president Lee MacPhail upheld the Royals' protest. In explaining his decision, MacPhail noted that the "spirit of the restriction" on pine tar on bats was based not on the fear of unfair advantage, but simple economics; any contact with pine tar would discolor the ball, render it unsuitable for play, and require that it be discarded and replaced—thus increasing the home team's cost of supplying balls for a given game. MacPhail ruled that Brett had not violated the spirit of the rules nor deliberately "altered [the bat] to improve the distance factor".
But but but but...... the Patriots fumble less!!!!

BTW: Did you finish my paper on DFG?
 

lexrageorge

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 31, 2007
18,095
Exponent came out looking pretty bad for a company that supposedly provides scientific and mathematical expertise. It showed me that it's best not to use science to exonerate yourself from an accusation, as there are plenty of frauds out there that make a living by claiming to "do science" to stuff.
 

pedro1918

Member
SoSH Member
Mar 5, 2004
5,139
Map Ref. 41°N 93°W
Exponent had the reputation of giving their clients what they wanted long before "deflategate". The cynical among us could say the NFL chose Exponent because of that reputation.
 

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
37,054
Hingham, MA
Curran today

If you walked non-stop for eight years at a clip of 3.5 mph, you would walk 245,248 miles. The moon is 238,000 miles away. So you could have walked to the moon then walked/floated around up there for another 7,000 miles in the same time it took for somebody to dislodge the Patriots.
 

mwonow

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 4, 2005
7,094
No idea what the right thread is for this...mods feel free to move as appropriate. But in light of the MLB cheating scandal, ESPN published this article looking back on Deflategate:

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28502507/what-really-happened-deflategate-five-years-later-nfl-scandal-aged-poorly
Some snippets:

"Hey, baseball world: We here on the NFL side are sorry to see your game engulfed in a cheating scandal. It's truly awful to know that the Houston Astros swindled their way to the 2017 World Series title. But I've got to laugh and remind you that five years ago today, the NFL produced a scandal that was chess to your checkers.

Deflategate was a Jedi mind trick to your multiplication tables. It was HD digital to your analog. In its zeal to preserve the perception of credible outcomes, the NFL scandalized itself with an investigation that produced far more suspicion, ill will and accusations of impropriety than the original allegations themselves."

"At best, it was a relatively minor rules violation that no rational person would link to the Patriots' victory two weeks later in Super Bowl XLIX. At worst, Deflategate was a retroactive framing of the league's most successful franchise and a future Hall of Fame quarterback, a clumsy and forgettable endeavor and an unfortunate reminder that the NFL's standard for discipline demands only that an event was "more probable than not" to have occurred. Brady ultimately served a four-game suspension because the NFL believed he was "generally aware" of the scheme."

"The Patriots? They paid dearly for a far less consequential allegation, in part because the NFL considered them repeat cheaters after the 2007 Spygate affair.

In this case, however, the Patriots denied nearly every aspect of the NFL's allegations, including Brady's involvement, and took extraordinary steps to defend themselves. That effort included a website to dispute the NFL's Wells Report on the scandal, one that included multiple scientists pointing out that footballs can deflate naturally based on weather conditions.

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. (Brady got his suspension overturned in 2015 but ultimately lost on appeal and served the punishment in 2016.)

Yet when it was all over, no one could say for sure if Deflategate actually happened. A reasonable person could be left thinking that the investigation itself was the true scandal."

"The Wells Report was based largely on a series of text messages from an equipment assistant who referred to himself as "The Deflator," and the unexplained pregame detour of a locker room attendant who brought the game balls into a bathroom with him before the game. There was no direct evidence that the equipment assistant removed air from the footballs, or that Brady asked him to do it. And the halftime inflation measurement was a rushed and haphazard effort, one that would never pass scientific scrutiny to confirm accuracy."

"In the end, it is nothing more than an opinion to suggest that it was "more probable than not" that Deflategate happened. In the terms of advanced statistics, the NFL was saying there was a 51% probability that Deflategate occurred but a 100% necessity to issue discipline. It's not outlandish to think that someone connected with the Patriots might have tried to help Brady, or that Brady had tacitly accepted that help, but there's no direct evidence of it.

And when an MIT professor explained that weather conditions could do the same thing, based on the ideal gas law, who could argue? The NFL wouldn't have known either way, because it did not regularly record pounds-per-square-inch readings to that point. For all we know, football deflation occurred naturally every week."


It goes on and talks about how DFG - despite having no real evidence at all that it happened - has been part of the reason the Pats were viewed with suspicion for the Bengals sideline taping.

Super interesting read, IMO. I wish they'd have gone into more detail (it was briefly mentioned) about how the NFL supposedly took great pains to test footballs the following season, but never released any of the data. I wonder why? Hmmmmmm... Maybe because the laws of physics worked in 2015 and 2016, just like they did in 2014, and a cold game in Green Bay in 2015 would show......a loss of air pressure?

Anyway, kind of surprising to see this ESPN article kind of exonerate the Patriots at least a little.
Definitely the right thread for this - I started it because I was sick of all the negative DFG stuff washing over the sustained excellence of BB, TB12 & co:

"I'm sick to death of monitoring a half dozen threads to react, angrily, to yet another attack on the NEP.

So...I'd rather have a thread that celebrates the reasons I love rooting for this team."

Glad to see another stake in the DFG bs, and looking forward to another 670K+ posts celebrating the incredible, unique standard set by the NEP.
 

BostonWolverine

New Member
Dec 6, 2017
109
Ann Arbor, MI
I teach analytical chemistry and use the numbers from the Well's report as an example question for the statistics part of the course. Teaching how awful the NFL is one class at a time.
 

Kliq

Member
SoSH Member
Mar 31, 2013
22,667
To this day I still do this.... I live in NE like many of you and I know you've all experienced this. But when it gets cold out and my car's "low tire pressure" light comes on, if one of my kids is in the car I say, "Oh hey look, cold weather DOES impact air pressure". And if they're not in the car, I text them to say the same thing. They roll their eyes because of course they know what I'm referring to.

It always amazed me that anyone living in cold parts of the country wouldn't INSTANTLY realize how stupid DFG was, because everyone has had this cold weather/tire experience here in the northeast (and I'm sure in Wisconsin and Minnesota etc.).
I always thought the best example of this was a basketball that you left in your garage/shed/backyard going flat despite never being used during the winter.

Also, I would like the Deflategate Papers. TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW!
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
SoSH Member
Oct 1, 2015
24,369
I always thought the best example of this was a basketball that you left in your garage/shed/backyard going flat despite never being used during the winter.

Also, I would like the Deflategate Papers. TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW!
Yep the basketball illustration is perfect.

And...just sent it to you. Enjoy.
 

BaseballJones

ivanvamp
SoSH Member
Oct 1, 2015
24,369
Saw this posted by the Patriots today:

26 years ago today, Robert Kraft purchased the Patriots. The two most dominant decades in NFL history followed.

28148


And the 2010-2019 period featured five trips to the Super Bowl and three SB titles, while the 2000-2009 period featured four trips to the Super Bowl and three SB titles.

And even the 1994-1999 time frame wasn't too bad either.

1994: 10-6, made playoffs
1995: 6-10
1996: 11-5, made playoffs, lost in the Super Bowl
1997: 10-6, made playoffs
1998: 9-7, made playoffs
1999: 8-8

So even the years before the Dynasty, they went 54-42 (.563), with four trips to the playoffs and one SB appearance. Not too shabby. Kraft's tenure at the helm of the Patriots has been nothing short of spectacular.
 

Preacher

Member
SoSH Member
Jun 9, 2006
6,411
Pyeongtaek, South Korea
Saw this posted by the Patriots today:

26 years ago today, Robert Kraft purchased the Patriots. The two most dominant decades in NFL history followed.

And the 2010-2019 period featured five trips to the Super Bowl and three SB titles, while the 2000-2009 period featured four trips to the Super Bowl and three SB titles.

And even the 1994-1999 time frame wasn't too bad either.

1994: 10-6, made playoffs
1995: 6-10
1996: 11-5, made playoffs, lost in the Super Bowl
1997: 10-6, made playoffs
1998: 9-7, made playoffs
1999: 8-8

So even the years before the Dynasty, they went 54-42 (.563), with four trips to the playoffs and one SB appearance. Not too shabby. Kraft's tenure at the helm of the Patriots has been nothing short of spectacular.
It's amazing that after the 2000-2009 decade with 4 SB appearances and 3 wins, they would follow it up with an even more dominant decade. That's crazy.
 

SirPsychoSquints

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 13, 2005
5,013
Pittsburgh, PA
Saw this posted by the Patriots today:

26 years ago today, Robert Kraft purchased the Patriots. The two most dominant decades in NFL history followed.

View attachment 28148


And the 2010-2019 period featured five trips to the Super Bowl and three SB titles, while the 2000-2009 period featured four trips to the Super Bowl and three SB titles.

And even the 1994-1999 time frame wasn't too bad either.

1994: 10-6, made playoffs
1995: 6-10
1996: 11-5, made playoffs, lost in the Super Bowl
1997: 10-6, made playoffs
1998: 9-7, made playoffs
1999: 8-8

So even the years before the Dynasty, they went 54-42 (.563), with four trips to the playoffs and one SB appearance. Not too shabby. Kraft's tenure at the helm of the Patriots has been nothing short of spectacular.
The highest win totals of any team over any 10 season period (not bound by calendar decades)
  1. 126 NE, decade ended 2016
  2. 126 NE 2012
  3. 125 NE 2019
  4. 124 NE 2015
  5. 124 NE 2013
  6. 123 NE 2018
  7. 123 NE 2017
  8. 123 NE 2011
  9. 123 SF 1998
  10. 122 NE 2014
  11. 121 NE 2010
  12. 121 SF 1997
  13. 121 SF 1996
  14. 120 SF 1993
  15. 120 SF 1992
  16. 119 SF 1995
  17. 118 SF 1994
  18. 115 IND 2010
  19. 115 IND 2009
  20. 114 IND 2008
Patriots are also tied for 22rd, 28th, 32th, 83th, and 95th.

128 teams accumulated at least 100 wins over any given 10 season period - the Patriots, 49ers and Steelers are 15 of them each.
 

Silverdude2167

Member
SoSH Member
Oct 9, 2006
4,681
Amstredam

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
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Jul 15, 2005
37,054
Hingham, MA
Know what's an underrated ass kicking in this run? The 2016 AFCCG. Pittsburgh was all confident with the Killer B's. AB had that Facebook live thing where Tomlin said the assholes have a head start, etc. And they came up to Foxboro and got demolished (including a patented NE vs PIT flea flicker). That was super fun.
 

BigSoxFan

Member
SoSH Member
May 31, 2007
47,083
Know what's an underrated ass kicking in this run? The 2016 AFCCG. Pittsburgh was all confident with the Killer B's. AB had that Facebook live thing where Tomlin said the assholes have a head start, etc. And they came up to Foxboro and got demolished (including a patented NE vs PIT flea flicker). That was super fun.
Yup. And keep in mind we did that without Gronk too.
 

Marciano490

Urological Expert
SoSH Member
Nov 4, 2007
62,312
Know what's an underrated ass kicking in this run? The 2016 AFCCG. Pittsburgh was all confident with the Killer B's. AB had that Facebook live thing where Tomlin said the assholes have a head start, etc. And they came up to Foxboro and got demolished (including a patented NE vs PIT flea flicker). That was super fun.
It’d be fun to rank favorite victories over the Steelers. Didn’t we play them opening day during the first leg of the dynasty and just obliterate their souls?
 

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
37,054
Hingham, MA
It’d be fun to rank favorite victories over the Steelers. Didn’t we play them opening day during the first leg of the dynasty and just obliterate their souls?
Opening day 2002

2001 AFCCG
2004 AFCCG
2005 Week 3 I believe (underrated comeback win - Light broke his leg IIRC)
2007 Anthony Smith guarantee game
2010 Gronk breakout I think?
2013 massacre
2015 opener - Butler vs AB
2016 regular season - no Ben
2016 AFCCG
2017 regular season - fumble at goal line / Harmon pick
2019 opener

12 wins to choose from...

I rank them
2001 AFCCG
2004 AFCCG
2016 AFCCG
2007
2017
2002
2005
2013
2010
2015
2019
2016
 
Last edited:

SamCassellsStones

New Member
Feb 8, 2017
130
Those two passes to Branch were frozen ropes, Brady had the flu that game too, right?
Indeed. Easy to forget that that was a really good Steelers team: 15-1 record, which at that point had never been done in the AFC before. Thats including a big win over the Pats, which wasn’t particularly competitive.
 

Ralphwiggum

Member
SoSH Member
Jun 27, 2012
9,824
Needham, MA
Opening day 2002

2001 AFCCG
2004 AFCCG
2005 Week 3 I believe (underrated comeback win - Light broke his leg IIRC)
2007 Anthony Smith guarantee game
2010 Gronk breakout I think?
2013 massacre
2015 opener - Butler vs AB
2016 regular season - no Ben
2016 AFCCG
2017 regular season - fumble at goal line / Harmon pick
2019 opener

12 wins to choose from...

I rank them
2001 AFCCG
2004 AFCCG
2016 AFCCG
2007
2017
2002
2005
2013
2010
2015
2019
2016
Amazing.
 

Hendu for Kutch

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 7, 2006
6,920
Nashua, NH
It’d be fun to rank favorite victories over the Steelers. Didn’t we play them opening day during the first leg of the dynasty and just obliterate their souls?
As tims mentioned, that was the first game in Gillette, after a full off-season of whining by Kordell Stewart and Lee Flowers (remember him?!?) about how the better team lost.

There was an absolute decleater of a block on Flowers in that game, I think it was Branch in his first NFL game.

Edit: Because the internet never forgets, enjoy with my compliments:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjeulsD6fDU&t=217s
 
Last edited:
Apr 24, 2019
1,278
I’ll never forget that block by Branch. What a great start to the season. And I think they followed up that blow out with another one against the jets. What the hell happened after that in 2002?