The Patriots' kicker scoreboard trick debunked

A viral claim held that a Gillette Stadium video board showing a reverse-angle of opposing field-goal attempts - creating a faint second set of goalposts behind the real uprights - helped explain an astonishing Patriots advantage in field-goal performance: +9.4% from 2001-19 versus opponents. The claim rested on dozens of clips of visiting kickers facing the reverse-angle image and a table showing New England far outpacing every other franchise. The analysis tested whether the screens could plausibly produce that gap by separating kicks at Foxboro from kicks in opponents’ stadiums and by building an expected-make model that controls for distance, individual kickers (random effects), season trends, home/away, playoffs, temperature and wind, while intentionally leaving stadium out so any venue effect shows up in the residuals.

That model finds visitors at Foxboro underperformed expectation by 4.1%, while visitors in their own stadiums underperformed by 2.7%, leaving an excess of only 1.4% that could be tied to the scoreboard - about three to four extra misses over 19 seasons - with a standard error large enough to make it indistinguishable from noise. Simulations show Foxboro’s shortfall sits squarely in the range produced by chance; the 2010 upgrade to much larger HD boards produced no worsening of the effect. The most plausible explanation is a mix of strong Patriots special teams, game context, and ordinary statistical variation rather than a causal “board trick” disrupting professional kickers.