that is why the Pats are great, not married to a dogma and adjust on the fly.
Or, the Rams defense was tired and disheartened because their offense was complete garbage and at some point they had to realistically ask themselves "Is there ANY ******* chance Jared Goff wins this game?"
As for "deflategate" apparently not helping beause, "hey, it's past and the P*ts are STILL winning so it must not have been a big deal..."
See, the thing is, in and of itself, it's not a big deal. What it does is help the receiver and runner hold on to the ball and not fumble. Care to look at the P*ts fumble statistics? They were so far out of the statistical outlier that this alone should have alerted the league SOMETHING was up. So, now they got caught and they have to stop deflating balls.
Guess what? Deflating footballs was ONE thing they do. Just ONE little thing they do to get an advantage.
- The have been caught sneaking in and stealing other teams 1st quarter scripts.
- They have been caught stealing radio signals.
- They have been caught communicating with the QB helmet after the 15 second cutoff.
- They have been caught filming other teams signal calls
- They take advantage of completely vague and confusing verbiage in the rulebook to their benefit and the refs never question it. Never have an issue.
I would submit to you that there are 15 little tiny things the P*ts are doing that are either against the rules or unethical and each one of those things gives them a very small advantage in some aspect of the game. All those little things add up to nearly perfect seasons and 9 trips to the SB in 17 years.
You want a superbowl halftime show worth watching? Lock all the P*ts in the locker room and release tear-gas on closed-circuit camera.