TODAY’S SPORTSTAT — Patriots get a kick out of playing in Gillett Stadium
By JERRY TAPP
Is it possible that the reason the New England Patriots have been so successful over the past several years is because opposing team kickers have found Gillett Stadium tough to kick in? Before you answer that, consider this:
From the 2010 NFL season until Week #13 of this year, opposing field goal kickers have made 76.1 percent of field goal attempts at the Patriots’ Gillett Stadium, lowest percentage of any opposing field goal kickers in an NFL stadium.
Here’s a look at the opposing team field goal percentages at each NFL team’s home field from 2010 until Week #13 of this season.
New England 76.1
Arizona 78.4
Miami 78.5
San Francisco 80.2
Tampa Bay 80.3
Rams 80.7
Washington 80.8
Cleveland 81.3
Green Bay 81.5
Philadelphia 81.9
Pittsburgh 81.9
Indianapolis 82.0
Oakland 82.4
Detroit 82.7
Chicago 83.5
Houston 83.5
Denver 83.9
Kansas City 83.9
Baltimore 84.3
Buffalo 84.6
Seattle 84.8
Chargers 85.6
New Orleans 85.7
Dallas 85.8
Jacksonville 86.2
Cincinnati 86.3
New York Jets 86.3
Tennessee 87.3
Minnesota 88.6
Carolina 88.9
Atlanta 88.8
New York Giants 90.5
There could be a lot of factors involved in why the Patriots’ opponents have the worst field goal percentage on New England’s home field… it could be the weather conditions, it could be the way the Pats’ special teams defend the attempted field goals of the opposition. It could be that Patriot opponents attempts more “longer” field goals.
In any case, I’ll just let the numbers speak for themselves. Any thoughts?
Jerry Tapp
Jerry Tapp is a freelance writer from Racine, WI with a major concentration on sports statistics and numbers that define sports teams and players. He began his foray into sports stats-focused writing as a regular contributor to the “Numbers” column in Inside Sports magazine in the mid-1980’s and then began writing a weekly “Stats on Tapp” column for the Racine Journal Times. That column was eventually nationally syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. He later wrote sports stats items for the Washington Post under the “Stat of the Day” heading. After launching his blog, www.statsontapp.com in 2011, Jerry turned his sports stats attention to sports websites. He wrote regularly for Bleacher Report, BallHyped, football.com and Heavy.com. Today he keeps busy writing weekly columns of stats-centric articles for three sports websites, Today’s Pigskin (NFL), Today’s Knuckleball (MLB) and Today’s Fastbreak (NBA), and as a monthly contributor to the Milwaukee Brewers “GameDay” publication that is distributed to fans attending games at Miller Park.