Sports

Book: Stats say Patriots’ antics haven’t stopped after Spygate

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The NFL might have long since moved on from the 2007 Spygate scandal, but at least one extremely determined fan has not — and he’s claiming Bill Belichick and the Patriots haven’t, either.

Bryan O’Leary has spent what the Dallas-based financial strategist estimates is $30,000 (and counting) to self-publish the book “Spygate: The Untold Story,” which alleges the Patriots’ videotaping was much more vital to their three Super Bowl victories than the NFL let on, and that getting exposed by the Jets hasn’t kept Belichick from continuing to engage in misconduct to this day.

The Patriots did not acknowledge a request for comment about the book by The Post. An NFL spokesman declined comment.

Citing no sources but using data he says was crunched by both a Ph.D. in statistics from China and a famed Vegas bookmaker, O’Leary insists that breaking the rules is the only way to explain New England’s incredible success at home since 2002, and especially in the six seasons since the taping scheme was uncovered.

Nevertheless, there has been no further official action by the league since the Spygate incident.

O’Leary, who grew up in Pittsburgh as a Steelers fan, claims a logical reading of those numbers means the Jets can expect to be yet another victim of skullduggery in today’s AFC East showdown at Gillette Stadium.

“You just cannot explain away all these statistical anomalies,” O’Leary said in a telephone interview this week. “The only thing that makes sense is that the Patriots are still cheating, and it’s especially obvious to anyone with a brain who looks at the numbers that they’re still cheating at home.”

Citing a 2007 ESPN report that the Patriots were accused of using a second radio frequency at home, O’Leary theorizes New England assistant Ernie Adams — one of the more mysterious figures in the league — still communicates with Tom Brady via that alternate frequency after Brady’s helmet microphone goes dead per NFL rules 15 seconds before the snap.

O’Leary also suggests the Patriots still could be using cameras to film opponents’ defensive signals at Gillette Stadium by hiding them in obscure places.

What isn’t in dispute is Belichick and the Patriots — despite a Week 2 loss to the Cardinals this season — remain practically untouchable at Gillette Stadium long after Spygate was uncovered.

Including playoff games, the Patriots are 34-7 (.829) at home since Spygate was uncovered after the 2007 season opener and 77-16 (.828) since 2002, numbers that are such huge statistical outliers in the NFL’s salary-cap era of parity that O’Leary says they can’t be attributed just to Belichick’s coaching skills and Brady’s quarterbacking.

The next-best team on that list is the Ravens, who are 66-21 (.759) at home — more than a season’s worth of home games behind New England and simply too good to be true to O’Leary and his SMU-based statistician, Dr. Miao Zang.

Even fishier to O’Leary and Zang is the Patriots posting five unbeaten regular seasons of 8-0 at home from 2001-11 and winning 31 consecutive home games in one stretch with Brady at quarterback.

Zang describes the five unbeaten home records as “an extreme statistical anomaly” compared with the rest of the NFL, where almost half of the league has failed to do that even once since true free agency arrived 20 years ago.

“The average NFL team since 2002 wins just 4.5 of its home games, yet the Patriots win seven out of eight every year for 11 years — three standard deviations from the rest of the league,” said O’Leary, noting in particular that New England went 8-0 at home in 2009 but just 2-6 on the road.

Even more suspicious, O’Leary writes, is the Patriots’ uncanny success in covering the point spread both home and away the past 11 years. New England is 109-69-6 against the spread since 2001, producing a net of 40 winning bets that Zang writes is once again nearly three standard statistical deviations from the rest of the league — “an extremely rare case.”

“The statistical evidence seems to show they’re still using a non-football advantage,” O’Leary said. “I’m not saying they’re cheating, but this isn’t a win-all-your-home-games league.”

O’Leary’s book claims the league and commissioner Roger Goodell also were complicit because Goodell intentionally minimized the cheating by refusing to suspend Belichick, destroying the tapes and having former New England aide Matt Walsh — who was part of much of the filming — sign a confidentiality agreement.

Belichick claimed he did not know the tapings were against the rules. Goodell disagreed, and took the unprecedented steps of docking the Patriots a first-round pick and fining the team $250,000, and Belichick a record $500,000. But O’Leary says the league covered up the full extent because it feared the fallout from fan, coach and player lawsuits as well as the potentially enormous damage that three officially tainted

Super Bowls could do to the league’s bottom line.

“The NFL isn’t a $9 billion-a-year entity and teams aren’t worth more than a billion dollars each if people know its games were fraudulent,” O’Leary said. “Why else would the owners all go along in making this go away?”

O’Leary has a bit of a checkered past himself, considering his license to sell securities was suspended by the National Association of Securities Dealers in 1997 because of what he says was a rogue employee and (by choice, he claims) never reinstated.

But O’Leary said his own life is irrelevant to the Patriots’ antics and claims he wrote the book because he was dismayed no one had done one before him. He had the manuscript vetted by an attorney and said he has not received any response from the NFL, the Patriots or anyone he portrays critically in it.

“The book shows that the NFL and the Patriots have pulled one over on all of us,” O’Leary said.