Bill Belichick and the Patriots made sure opposing kickers were seeing double.
The legendary coach allegedly utilized the scoreboard at Gillette Stadium to showcase the yellow uprights before opponents’ field goal attempts and thus leave the kicker seeing four different yellow bars before an attempt, as revealed by the “Paganetti and Underhill” podcast.
Ryan Paganetti, who has worked in the analytics departments for the Eagles, Jaguars and Raiders, posted multiple screenshots to X of kickers lining up while the Jumbotron showed a pair of yellow lines.
He said he analyzed more than decade of TV broadcasts and provided screenshots of the Patriots playing mind games with the kickers, including Billy Cundiff’s infamous missed 32-yard attempt in the 2012 AFC Championship game that sealed the Patriots’ win over the Ravens and a trip to the Super Bowl.
“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,” Paganetti tweeted Tuesday night alongside four photos showcasing the extra lines. “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.”
Belichick is known for utilizing — both legally and illegally — every little bit of information he can to enhance his team’s chances to win and this certainly fits the bill.
It’s hard enough to kick at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., especially when its cold, and it’s all the harder if you’re seeing four lines.
Paganetti said on the podcast he reviewed kicks from roughly 2012-20, and detailed that it was easier to execute on one side of the field since the Jumbotron was directly behind the bars.
“They legitimately did it every single chance that they could,” he said on the podcast. “They consistently did this over and over again. … It legitimately looked like there were four uprights across.
“If you quickly looked at it as a kicker, it would almost certainly cause some level of hesitation because it looked so weird.”
Meanwhile, New England’s kickers faced no such issues.
Paganetti said that he reviewed 52 field goals attempted by the Patriots during the same games and the extra bars never appeared when New England lined up with the kick.
“It is the perfect encapsulation of the Patriots dynasty,” Paganetti posted to X. “No detail was too small, and no possible edge was left unexplored.”
Reporter Nick Underhill noted during the podcast that this tactic is not specific to New England, saying that college teams use this trick more due to certain rules in the NFL.
Paganetti tweeted that the Eagles attempted to utilize the same trick but could not do so since the video screens inside Lincoln Financial Field did not sit right behind the uprights.
“There’s such an incredible amount of games that legitimately come down to a field goal being made or missed,” Paganetti said on the podcast. “If there’s anything you could do that could even slightly throw the other team off, I think you have to at least think about it.”
He added: “It perfectly represents how anyone who is playing the Patriots always just had to think about every little nuance.”
