The thing that sets them apart is attention to detail. You watch them, and you see they make far fewer small mistakes than other teams.
Their hallmark is paying attention to the little stuff.
So...yeah, "wasting valuable resources" on things like deflating balls, taping signals, spying on other teams' calls, etc. is entirely consistent with their methodology. It's no different than finding every little loophole in the rule book, so you can do stupid ***** like lining up a tackle eligible in the slot and having him run backwards on the snap to confuse the defense, or pretending to have a head injury to try and draw a penalty.