The laws of physics worked in favor of the New England Patriots when a football spiraled into the arms of one of their players at the end of the Super Bowl. But those same laws could not save the Patriots from the conclusion that they almost certainly tampered with footballs — by improperly deflating them — to help the team win an earlier playoff game.
In a report commissioned by the National Football League and released Wednesday, a noted engineering firm and a Princeton physics professor concluded that an equation known as the Ideal Gas Law could not explain why the Patriots footballs were at such low pressures when they were measured at halftime of New England’s postseason victory over the Indianapolis Colts.