In their lengthy response to the Wells Report, the Patriots argue that the league prejudged the issues related to a loss of air pressure in footballs during the AFC Championship game.
The basis for that argument is the letter sent to the team by NFL senior vice president David Gardi on the day after the game was played. In the letter, Gardi writes that the league made “preliminary findings” that the balls used by the team did not meet the standard set forth in the rules. The team says that they made those findings “with no basis and no understanding of the effect of temperature on psi” and, therefore, “had already prejudged the issues” before hiring Ted Wells to investigate the issue.
The Patriots point out that Gardi’s letter was inaccurate regarding one ball used by the Patriots measuring at 10.1 psi and that all of the Colts balls conformed to the standard, which leads them to wonder why the team was “dealing with this investigation for months based on inaccurate information.”
“The investigators were not troubled by any of these obvious errors or by the League’s failure to correct them. The inaccuracies in this letter, combined with subsequent leaks to the media that were never corrected by the League placed this investigation on a footing of misinformation, to the Patriots substantial disadvantage.”
A rebuttal of the Wells Report’s scientific evidence by Nobel Prize winner Roderick McKinnon is also included in the report and the Patriots are clear that they believe the league worked backwards after jumping to a conclusion about what happened in January.