Oh, believe me, I don't don't trust anyone in that organization. Like a NASCAR team, I assume they are all trying to find an edge that skirts the rules and praying people don't find out.
But this isn't about our baseline suspicions, it should be about what can be proven.
But if the NFL and Goodell did not have their heads up their patoots, this would also be about the why. And the answer is that like Rodgers, the Patriots were after the thin line of 12.5 (or 13.5 for Rodgers). But the Patriots wanted to guard against re-inflation by refs during inspection as well (see story of 16 PSI), due to random fluctuation or differences in gauges.
That's what needs to be fixed. A four game suspension is for PR. If game integrity of footballs was truly this important, the competition committee or other teams would have asked for better rules in the first place.
This PFT piece, actually, covers the relevant considerations that should have been covered prior to the freakout, if the inflation of the ball was a paramount importance. http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com...rop-naturally/
The fact that Vincent (who hopefully never took a physics course at UW-Madison and therefore has an excuse to not know what the Ideal Gas Law is) was unaware of these considerations, shows how monumentally unprepared the League was for this "crisis".