… I kinda find the Patriots' rebuttal document persuasive. Do they make the classic bad-lawyering mistake of throwing in every argument they could think of (ahem, "The Deflator"), instead of limiting themselves to just the good ones? Indeed. But here's the core of their position:
1. While there is ample evidence that staff were encouraged to keep air pressure low, there isn't much to show that they were instructed to deflate below league limits — that is, one could easily understand their instructions as "keep to the league minimum."
2. The physical evidence has problems. You can't call something a "control" group if it is subject to a different treatment. The Patriot footballs were tested first, and then the Colts' ten minutes later. According to the Pats' experts, physics tells us that, in those 10 minutes in a warm room, the air inside in the "control" footballs could expand enough to account for the difference. It's been quite some time some Mrs. Cevoli's AP Chemistry class, so I have no views on Boyle's law, but the statistical methods point seems sound. Shouldn't the league do an experiment to see if that could matter? Has to be cheaper than the millions they gave Ted Wells.
3. "Consciousness of guilt" — the texts of unknown content from Brady to the equipment staff — ain't always consciousness of guilt. It can also be consciousness of unfair suspicion. If the FBI sends me an e-mail asking for an interview, I'm darned well going to ask everyone I know why (Ok: full confession. I did remove the tags from that mattress). If all we look at is the phone logs, that might look like a frantic cover-up. But it's equally consistent with perplexed innocence.
Though, again, I work at an institution with "Boston" in its name.