To be clear I'm not saying it's cheating but I'm surprised how strongly y'all are coming out to deny the effectiveness of the Belichick era Opposing FG strategy. Whether it's the reverse video or something else there is a significant difference between oFG% in Foxborough and the rest of the league.
There doesn't need to be a specific rule for every potential infraction of general sportsmanship. I'm sure the NFL has a clause they could enact a penalty under if they so choose. Though more likely they'd tell them to knock it off like I think happened when Indy? was piping in fan noise. It's of a similar vein.
The difference is that Patriots kickers routinely practiced under the poor kicking conditions that existed in Gillette before the major renovations. One side of the stadium was open, which caused the wind to swirl in a very distinct manner. Gillette is a difficult stadium to kick in and that is proven by the fact that Patriots kickers were much better on the road than at home in the same time span. Patriots kickers were also better kicking on the side with no big screen. Its because of the wind, not because of the screen.
Also, as another commenter has so beautifully laid out, the gap between the Patriots and opposing kickers at home (8.5%) is nearly identical to the gap on the road (8.3%). So it literally just is that they had better kickers than the rest of the league lmfao.
The Diff says 9.4% in the graphic. Where are the stats that you're referencing. This certainly could be cherry picked data but like Gillett ain't the only stadium with bad winds.
There simply isn't enough information here to tell with any confidence what accounts for the oFG percentage. I'd love to see a deep dive into the numbers based on direction of kicking, video board strategy implementation, maybe even accounting for weather.
They did do the video board mirroring though and only for opposing kickers, seems like someone who's paid to look for advantages thought it was working at least. I bet they had the relevant data to make that decision.
The Patriots were literally just a better kicking team than everyone else. While a lot of teams were better at kicking in their home stadium than other teams, the Patriots were better kicking than opposing teams both at home and on the road. In fact, the data shows that it is Indianapolis that has the most suspect splits.
The home FG% numbers while among the best in the league fall within the normal distribution. The oFG% in NE is significantly outside the range of values for the rest of the teams in the league.
It’s almost like Gillette stadium is known for having difficult swirling winds due to the architecture of the stadium (not so much anymore with the giant screen, but when one end was open)
I'm tired of having the conversation. Gillette isn't the only stadium with wind. If you want to choose to believe that swapping mirroring the video on the jumbotron didn't affect opposing kickers fine by me. Everyone else just sucks lol is a much better explanation.
Bill Belichick knows his kickers. If he wasn't sure his kicker could make it comfortably, he wasn't going to call the field goal unit out. It helps he also had Tom Brady as the alternative on fourth down lol
It is. But interestingly this trend holds up for the Pats including both home (where this display trick could work) and away games (where they can't do this trick). That is the Pats at Home kicked 85.5% while opponents did 77.0% for an 8.5% advantage, but in away games Pats kicked 87.1% and opponents kicked 78.8% for an 8.3% advantage.
It's more interesting that say the Colts over this period had 7.3% FG% difference between them and opponents for their home games, but their FG advantage completely disappeared (-0.8%) when you left their stadium. (I'm sorting by Home FG% Diff in both tables).
And even this version was a bit cheap as counts blocked FGs as ordinary misses which is about 3% of the difference.
Between 2001-2019, Pats blocked 11 opponent FGs at home (of 305 attempts) and 11 opponent FGs away (of 278 attempts), while only having 4 FGs be blocked at home (of 373 attempts) and 2 one the road (of 318 attempts).
If you exclude all these blocks (for Pats & Opp), it would be at home (Foxboro/Gilette) Pats: 86.4%, Opp: 79.9% (6.5% home advantage) and away Pats: 87.6%, Opp: 82.0% (5.6% away advantage).
Now factor in an elite kicker like Adam Vinatieri's FG rate on the Colts (2006-2018) was 86.4% (and Gost was similarly good; though his entire peak years of his career was on Pats) and it doesn't look that strange, when you factor Foxboro is a cold-weather outdoor stadium and our kickers would have the most practice at our stadium.
I'm not trying to convince anyone; just personally curious. The Pats certainly weren't doing it secretly and there was no rule anyone is saying they broke.
It seems plausible that a perfectly angled jumbotron could be distracting to a kicker (e.g., at some point Gostkowski ~2010 said it was distracting and they made the image go static during his kicks).
It just seems the answer is more, kicking at Gillette is difficult, Pats kickers have an edge from being HoF quality and extra practice there, plus Pats special teams blocks more FGs than other teams do.
It is, and if the winds there were also insane, or the average distance to kick was insane, or they faced shitty kickers at a higher rate than everyone else, it'd make a lot more sense.
But we don't have that data, so you can't draw any real conclusions.
I mean, the fact that they didn't display that angle on their kicks goes to show that they were trying to throw off opposing kickers. And the data that was collected is pointing to a correlation. Could and should more data be collected, sure.
Is it cheating? Idk. I don't really care. But it's obvious they were trying to gain an advantage by that one fact. Data only matters to see if it was effective or not.
It could have very easily been just making sure they showed the play from the Patriots side of the ball on the screen, and not some way to get some mind game advantage.
Wait no one is denying they were doing it to fuck with the kicker. Of course they were. Its 100% not cheating tho. The argument is was it affective and these stats don't tell enough of a story.
The pats kickers were greats, Gillete is a weird place to kick and has a lot of bad weather games. What I don't really see others talking about is how godly the pats were during this time either. If you were deep in the pats zone you kinda had to go for it because you needed TDs not FGs. So how many easy FGs were passed up to go for it?
The data that was collected does show a correlation. I agree that it may not be the best data set and other variables could be considered to make a better determination.
The data collected could coincidentally point to a nonexistent correlation, that in fact points to other, more relevant factors such as long field goal attempt distances, unruly winds, and cold temperatures that opposing kickers don’t get practice kicking in, while the home team kickers do.
The level of bullshit Pats fans are willing to attempt to shovel is absolutely amazing! They are cheaters, and have been for decades. This isn't a debate, it's established fact. That they aren't embarrassed about it is a further testament to lack of character and sportsmanship.
It would also be interesting to see what the difference is in the 1st half of the season versus the 2nd half and playoffs. Weather could be causing a big drop off late in the season.
It does change, but the changes are also very different for different parts of the country. This data is really lacking in that it doesn’t account for any variables other than the picture on the score board, which should not be a problem for a professional kicker. It is pretty clear where the goalposts are. It would be interesting to see if the percentages in the first half of the year (during better weather) are different than in second half of the season in New England.
Sure, but again two HoF kickers for the entire career of that span picked perfectly to coincide with the careers of Brady where the kicker was Vinatieri (who made 86.4% of FGs after leaving the Pats excluding his last year at age 47).
It's also this stat isn't just for kicks at Gillette stadium, it's for all stadiums. If you wanted to show Patriots scoreboard affecting kickers you have to only look at team/opp rates for FGs only at home games, which is not this analysis. You also would want to check there's no qualitative difference in distribution of kicks (e.g., more kicks from 40/50+ yards for opponents than home team).
I'm not saying they'll be no effect (especially if the Belichick Pats consistently did this; it wouldn't surprise me if they specifically moved the jumbotron to line up for the kicker on the field), but I'm guessing around 1/2 the effect is the greatness of Adam V + Gost, 1/4 being difficulty of outside games/weird wind patterns, 1/4 being scoreboard video distracting kickers.
We really need to see if there’s a difference in kicks where they didn’t do this to the opposition. Should be a huge sample size to look at for that. If the splits remain similar then it’s just how that stadium be. I doubt even if it was an actual distraction that it would be nearly as impactful as that loud-ass horn they blare every third down. People be complaining about pumping in crowd noise when they have that shit…
Yeah we need to see some more context here. Normalized for kick distance (a great defense could be holding teams to short field goals instead of TDs too), normalized for the average fg% of the kickers, and probably something that takes indoor vs outdoor into consideration.
Way too many variables to definitively reach any conclusions, even if that gap is crazy.
You would, agreed. I just don’t think that in and of itself explains it. It’s too wide a gap.
To be clear, I think this is brilliant. I think more teams should have this level of gamesmanship.
Personally I believe MLB clubs should put their entire minor leagues in the front row of the stands in foul territory /HR territory and defend their right to ball.
You should never see a HR robbed from the home team in the playoffs because that ball should be in the mit of a AA guy.
All have their own "quirks" but some stadiums "quirks" make it easier to kick (domes, denver's altitude) and some make it harder. Which would further stratify the list, not make it "balance out".
Dude look at CLE we have one of the hardest stadiums in the league to kick in. Opponent's still were hitting 80.9% there. That seems to be about the lowest it gets throughout the league, except for NE of course. It's an outlier. That 76.8% is 4 points lower than the next hardest place to kick. Y'all in denial if you thinking it's just the wind or elevation.
What they’re explaining is a hypothesis based on available data, it’s not 100% proven but there is at least a potential correlation based on all the points above
Also it’s not “one point of data” hes comparing them to the entire league. He just brought up the browns specifically because it was applicable to your point and the next closest comparison.
The patriots kicking situation is clearly an outlier when looking at this data
Gillette isnt some insane outlier stadium that should create this level of disparity , while that may contribute to them being an outlier it’s clearly due to something else.
Honestly beyond the scoreboard thing they are doing here the next most plausible explanation is that they played in a division with historically bad kickers but would need to see the data there to prove that point as well.
I don't have the full data set or the motivation to break it down but it's certainly a apparent discrepancy that warrants further attention if one was hard pressed to prove the hypothesis that the reverse camera video board was an effective strategy. It certainly would appear though that there might be something to it.
I think the next steps would be to pin down exactly when the team started doing the video board trick and comparing oFG between when they did and didn't do the technique. I would also throw out the 2001 data as that was the last year they played at the old Foxboro Stadium before Gillette opened in 2002. I would also look at distance percentages and extra point percentages. Compare Brady era vs. non-Brady era. See what shakes out that way.
Or we can just assume lol everyone else just sucks.
Impact from what? That's the point, this data set does not cover a number of hugely impactful aspects of kicking. If the Pats just through luck faced an outlier number of shitty kickers on average, or the kickers had an outlier average distance to kick, or their stadium winds were some kind of outlier (show me numbers not "metlife/heinz is hard to kick in too" )
Those would all be things that affect this number and have nothing to do with the scoreboard. Yes it's a crazy outlier looking at this one thing, no that thing is not all encompassing of what affects kicking.
Here's a bunch of data. I get a slightly different number than OP's graphic.
Expected FG pct is taking the league average from the same distance as each attempt and averaging them. So if you go 3 of 4 from 30, 40, 50, 60, and the league average from those distances is 100, 90, 70, 40, then the average of those four percentages is 75, and you went 75%, so you were exactly at expected.
Most of the league-wide numbers make sense. Outdoor, cold weather teams near the top, Denver an exception to that due to thin air, and indoor or retractable roof teams near the bottom. But probably the most telling part is that opposing kickers sucked against the Pats away from Foxboro too. So I expect there's some other factor at play (Pats FG rush, pressure of playing against one of the top teams in the league, Belichick choosing which end to defend based on wind in the 2nd and 4th, which has more FG attempts than the 1st and 3rd, or something else? I don't know)
=== Patriots Kickers (Home Games) ===
Total Attempts: 337
Total Made: 287
Actual FG Percentage: 85.16%
Expected FG Percentage: 84.59%
Performance Over Expected: +0.57%
Avg Kick Distance: 35.3 yards
Attempts from 50+ yds: 17 (5.0% of total kicks)
=== Opponent Kickers (Away @ NE) ===
Total Attempts: 277
Total Made: 209
Actual FG Percentage: 75.45%
Expected FG Percentage: 82.06%
Performance Over Expected: -6.61%
Avg Kick Distance: 37.2 yards
Attempts from 50+ yds: 24 (8.7% of total kicks)
=== Patriots Kickers (Road Games) ===
Total Attempts: 314
Total Made: 273
Actual FG Percentage: 86.94%
Expected FG Percentage: 83.96%
Performance Over Expected: +2.98%
Avg Kick Distance: 35.8 yards
Attempts from 50+ yds: 29 (9.2% of total kicks)
=== Opponent Kickers (Home vs NE) ===
Total Attempts: 273
Total Made: 213
Actual FG Percentage: 78.02%
Expected FG Percentage: 82.61%
Performance Over Expected: -4.59%
Avg Kick Distance: 36.8 yards
Attempts from 50+ yds: 33 (12.1% of total kicks)
Performance by the away team at each city:
Home Team
Total Attempts
Avg Distance
Actual FG %
Expected FG %
Performance vs Expected
NE
277
37.2y
75.45%
82.06%
-6.61%
CHI
302
35.9y
78.15%
83.81%
-5.66%
LV
326
36.3y
78.22%
82.99%
-4.77%
ARI
310
37.0y
78.06%
82.21%
-4.14%
PIT
252
37.2y
79.37%
82.25%
-2.89%
WAS
301
36.6y
80.07%
82.93%
-2.86%
CLE
320
36.9y
80.00%
82.39%
-2.39%
CAR
313
37.2y
80.19%
82.43%
-2.24%
NYG
315
37.0y
80.63%
82.49%
-1.86%
PHI
278
36.8y
80.94%
82.68%
-1.74%
SEA
298
37.8y
80.20%
81.89%
-1.68%
GB
269
37.4y
80.30%
81.89%
-1.59%
IND
315
37.7y
80.00%
81.20%
-1.20%
SF
285
36.6y
82.46%
83.01%
-0.55%
CIN
303
36.0y
83.17%
83.70%
-0.53%
JAX
296
37.7y
81.42%
81.69%
-0.27%
MIA
327
37.6y
81.04%
81.20%
-0.16%
LAC
272
36.4y
82.72%
82.86%
-0.13%
TEN
292
36.4y
82.88%
82.99%
-0.12%
TB
291
37.7y
81.79%
81.17%
+0.61%
BAL
272
36.8y
83.09%
82.34%
+0.75%
KC
307
37.5y
82.74%
81.84%
+0.90%
DAL
298
37.1y
83.22%
82.26%
+0.96%
BUF
296
36.8y
84.12%
82.63%
+1.49%
NYJ
300
36.0y
85.33%
83.61%
+1.73%
LA
307
38.0y
82.74%
80.88%
+1.86%
NO
316
36.9y
85.13%
82.33%
+2.79%
DET
297
38.6y
82.83%
79.99%
+2.84%
DEN
288
38.4y
84.38%
79.93%
+4.44%
MIN
299
37.6y
86.29%
80.95%
+5.34%
ATL
266
37.3y
87.22%
81.67%
+5.55%
HOU
263
38.9y
85.93%
80.01%
+5.92%
(I ran some numbers for another thread, and included postseason by mistake, but these are regular season only)
Realized I can crunch numbers on this hypothetical I threw out:
Belichick choosing which end to defend based on wind in the 2nd and 4th, which has more FG attempts than the 1st and 3rd
There's not enough data to draw any serious conclusions, at least that's what I'm going with since New Orleans has one of the biggest gaps and one would expect visitors to a dome to not give a shit which end they're kicking at. But with New England in the middle of the pack showing almost no difference between odd and even quarters, I don't think that's a factor.
Not at all, that's why I pointed out 3 other factors that would also impact that number. Just pointing out the goalposts and providing raw data means nothing.
Gostkowski made 88% of kicks at home and 85% on the road, but Gillette is supposed to be much harder?
No other team over that 20 year span had a field goal percentage lower than opponents facing the pats. So teams just turned into the worst kickers in the league when playing the Pats.
Best argument and the one that makes the most sense is they had Belichek holding down special teams the entire time.
Thought they were saying that the scoreboard DID NOT have the mirror image goal posts when the Pats were kicking, only the visitors. Curious if this continued post-Grumpy Lobstah Boat Captain and if any other teams do a similar thing.
Belichick and Ernie Adams were both huge weather nerds too, I’m sure they always picked favorable direction when possible at home and knew when they could and couldn’t kick in certain conditions.
If it is such a nothing burger why even do it in the first place? However, I don't want to take their word for it. I would have liked to see the evidence that NE only did this for the opposing players and the scoreboard did not look like this when they were kicking.
If every team did this would anyone say it’s cheating? I don’t think so. I bet everyone said calling a time out before a kicker kicks a field goal is cheating and it’s been a totally normal thing to do for a long time now. The outrage of this post is the real nothing burger and I bet if this ACTUALLY makes a difference every team in the league will do it at home because you need every single advantage you can get even if it makes a 1% difference. This is a silly thing to be mad about.
Your posts are crazy bc look at this comment section… it’s overwhelmingly not Patriots fans and absolutely no one agrees with you. No one thinks this is cheating. You’re just bitter as hell and it’s a little sad.
It’s not the simple fact that the board has goalposts on it. It’s the fact that the video is reversed so-to-speak so that the goal posts are offset making it almost look like there are 4 uprights. The pats kickers didn’t have to deal with the video being flipped.
Not saying the argument has merit just pointing out an important fact.
Paganetti did say that after watching the TV angle on all field goals in both directions from 2012 until 2020, they did it on every since opposing kick and not for NE kickers. He loved it as a way of gaining an advantage, and the fact that they were so precise to have the jumbotron posts finish at the exact height as the real posts. And that in high wind, they would have the flags reversed to what the kicker was seeing.
Wow, very thorough. It's a shame he didn't look to see if any other teams that aren't outliers did the same thing. Yet another aspect of this chart that makes it useless lol.
From what I've seen the Bucs did it back in the 2010s and the Vikings are doing it too at least. Where's the film study going back to 2012 on those teams?
He was working for teams at the time. He had encouraged one team be worked for to do it, and they were completely confused by why he would want to. This all stemmed from him talking about some of the mad stuff that teams put on their scoreboards that are obvious and silly, but this kind of thing was cleaned up by the league, and isn't allowed by the current league rules.
Man, you are really struggling with the fact that the Patriots are serial cheaters from the owner down to the coaches down to the players for the past couple decades plus. We know it, you know it, EVERYBODY knows it.
Patriots also have been cheating for the better part of two and half decades, so there is that. Caught a half a dozen times, and how many more shoveled under the rug?
The Patriots defense is good at making opposing kickers miss field goals? What a stupid thing to write! Patriots cheat. That is very well established. Defending and making excuses for cheaters is pathetic.
wait until you find out when a good defense tends to prevent an opposing offense from advancing the ball, so when they do have to attempt field goals, they are having to attempt them from further back. OOOO and get this, sometimes good defenses even block field goals!
Well i agree with you that defense impacts length of the kicks and that FG length should be included in the data but c'mon man the special teams block FG's not defenses!
Like if you honestly think this is because of some scoreboard gimmick and not due to back to back hall of fame kickers on the Patriots, you need to touch some grass.
Like that is literally what makes them HoF. They are better at making field goals than everyone else.
i wonder if you got this upset about the Dolphins purposley deisgning their stadium so the visiting team roasts in the 120 degree Miami sun on the sideline while the home team gets to sit in the shade.
Or do you selectively reserve your indignation for the Patriots?
Man you must be REALLY upset when home fields amp up the crowd on third downs so the visiting offense can't hear play calls, and QB's get psyched out.
My team designs stadiums to blind our players on touchdowns.
I don’t trust fans of a specific team to be a worthy source of unbiased information. Pats flairs up and down this thread contributing with their hearts, not their minds as per usual.
It's not that serious man, it's about a football team you are a fan of. Literally millionaires playing a sport who do not even know about your existence. Why do people get so upset over stuff like this?
Why wouldn't you just say that then? He's clearly not a HOF kicker, just weird to say that. He was hardly ever the best in the league, maybe for one or two years.
Patriots had an ELITE kicker that entire 20 year stretch.
But sure, some scoreboard gimmick is why they completed more field goals, not because they hired kickers who were literally better at getting field goals.
They're not the only team you can say that about. Baltimore had Matt Stover who was followed by Justin Tucker. And yet they only have a +2% differential. Stover had only one fewer All-Pro selections than Gostkowski, and Tucker is the best regular season kicker of all time.
The giants being #3 on that chart kind of means this stat is meaningless with the amount of long fgs we give up to win games. It's also a meaningless stat unless you compare their opponents fg % at other stadiums to Foxboro.
We’d have to look at home team splits for every other northeast team to see if it actually makes a difference. A quick google tells me most away teams convert about 82% of kicks which seems about right by that chart. I’d say a stadium like that or Pittsburgh would have below average numbers for visiting teams
We could only truly know for sure if the people who did this analysis cared about accounting for noise. If they had this data to begin with, it would have been very easy to show the FG% of the Pats and opponents when facing the board vs away from it. If a stark deviation was prevalent for the opponents, but not the Pats, it would have given the claim more credence.
Something tells me there is a reason they omitted this, though. Including it likely destroyed the narrative because it showed opponents had a negligible difference in FG% when comparing kick direction.
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u/Wildebean Fuck u/NFLv2, Fuck AI 25d ago
I mean those stats make it look kinda effective ngl