The Patriot Sway - This Gillette Stadium Video Board Trick Might Be The Most Patriot Scheme Of All Time
Much has been made of the Patriots’ mysterious “Pink Stripes.” How about yellow ones?
I went through more than a decade of TV broadcasts and uncovered a diabolically clever piece of Patriots gamesmanship.
When opposing kickers lined up at Gillette Stadium, the video board displayed a reverse view of the kick, placing a second, offset set of yellow uprights directly behind the real ones.
In windy conditions, even the orange streamers on the video board appeared to point in the opposite direction from those atop the physical uprights, making the illusion even more disorienting.
I found dozens of examples. In the same games, I reviewed 52 Patriots field goal attempts.
The illusion appeared on Patriots kicks exactly zero times.
We actually tried copying the idea when I was in Philadelphia, but the location of the video boards at Lincoln Financial Field made it nearly useless.
It is the perfect encapsulation of the Patriots dynasty. No detail was too small, and no possible edge was left unexplored.
Talk about hiding in plain sight. Ryan Paganetti explains his experience working with the Philadelphia Eagles trying to replicate an optical illusion via the Gillette end zone facing video board designed to make opposing kickers mistake the upright on the board for the real one in front of them.
What???
Seriously. The Eagles weren't able to do it since they didn't have an end zone facing board in Philly. Unlike Gillette, where they have had two ever since Gillette Stadium opened in 2002. The trick was simple. Use the reverse camera angle and offset the upright to impact the direction the kicker kicks. This might seem silly, but I can imagine it tricking opposing kickers who might depend on peripheral senses given everything they have to do in that quick moment.
And as Ryan explains - this camera choice on the board literally only appeared for opposing kickers. You might find this childish. You might find it silly. This is the Patriots after all. But I ran the stats from every angle of skepticism and I'm here to tell you...
It fucking worked.
Giphy Images.I went back and pulled all the data since Gillette opened in 2002. Certainly this little gimmick didn't affect professional football kickers, right?
We start by charting the Patriots actual field goal percentage in Gillette since then vs their expected field goal percentage. Expected field goal percentage takes into account the distance of the kicks for that season in any other stadium. Then we repeat this for Patriot opponents. Results are below.
Giphy Images.Opponents at Gillette were expected to make 84.1% of their kicks during this 24-year span. They made just 77.2%. Now I know what you're thinking. I thought the same thing.
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If we take all those kickers who kicked at Gillette and run their numbers vs expected field goal percentage everywhere else, they were slightly above average (.7%). So, we can't shake this off as it being some weird thing where New England just hosted teams with a bunch of bad kickers. That could have been had the AFC East just so happened to have crappy kickers which takes half the schedule. But no dice. Doesn't explain it.
Alright - what about other factors like weather? Maybe good kickers just can't kick in the tough conditions New England often presents. Not really. I mean - a little. But not nearly enough. Even controlling for distance, weather, kicker, temperature, and wind, opposing kickers are still 5.8 percentage points under expectation as opposed to our 6.3% observed starting point.
OK - this is compelling. But it doesn't mean anything if we don't corroborate it with some numbers showing opposing kickers were more likely to miss wide. That was the entire scheme, right? Give an optical illusion to make the kicker think the goal post was wider one way than it really was? Certainly this is where all the conspiracy fun ends and we find out these fun tricks didn't actually work, right?
Or not...
Damnit Patriots! I can't believe they've been pulling this off in plain sight. I can't respect this petty little nonsense more. It's brilliant and, as far as I can tell, not against the rules. They just found it, build a new stadium for it (I'm just going to assume), and made it happen.
I mean look at these results. 17.7% of opponent field goal kicks missed wide vs an expected 12.5%. Statistically significant at the .01 level for those who might be wondering. In effect - this scam gave the Patriots a 5.2% better chance of their opponent missing a field goal, all things considered. That's not nothing. In fact, for a petty gamesmanship scheme, this is really impressive.
The numbers back up what Ryan Paganetti was seeing on film. This might be one of the greatest organizational hacks in the history of sports. But just in case you're still not convinced, let's see how this all tracks on a year-by-year basis including the three pre-Gillette seasons there's play-by-play records for. Because if there's one last "how about this?" skeptical question it's wondering if the advantage was still there before the video boards. Meaning - at old Foxborough.
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The horizontal line at 0 is your baseline. Anything above that means opposing team kickers performed better than expected; anything below it means worse than expected. While the last two seasons at old Foxborough were slightly under expectation for opposing kickers, it's not statistically significant overall. And you'll notice that huge drop the following year. That's no coincidence. However - there is massive significance for opponents at Gillette.
This is wild stuff. I'd love to see if any kickers get asked about this. They'll probably shrug it off and say it didn't affect them. Shit, I would. But the numbers tell quite the tale. And as Ryan Pagannetti explains, so does the film.
All you can do is tip your cap. The Patriot Sway.