Football Freakonomics: Field Game Analysis

On January 19, 2002, Adam Vinatieri, New England Patriots kicker, went out on the field for a field goal attempt that no fan would have considered possible for him to make. It was a windy, and snowy playoff game, and the Patriots were down by 3 points to the Oakland Raiders with 27 seconds left in the game. The fans were very nervous, wondering how the weather conditions would affect Vinatieri. Perhaps they worried about the distance, wishing that the offence would have gotten further down the field, giving Vinatieri a shorter kick. But, would getting a shorter kick really have a made a big difference? Field goals are an important part of the game of Football. Within every game at least four field goals are attempted per game; with …show more content…
Lastly, in FootballOutsiders.com field goal difficulty was adjusted for altitude (Denver vs. non-Denver), temperature, and if the game was indoors. While almost all analyses looked at these environmental factors, Football Freakonomics looked at one distinct situational and psychological factor – “icing the kicker.” “Icing the kicker is when the opposing coach calls a timeout right before the kicker is about to kick the field goal in an effort to make them overthink the attempt and they end up missing the field goal. This analysis mostly relies on unreliable evidence and personal opinions, but it does compare the made percentage of kickers who were “iced” and those who were not in the last two minutes of a game. The data shows that icing the kicker has the opposite effect from what they want. Kickers who were iced have a higher made percentage than those who were not. A lot like the completion percentage, not every attempt is as hard as others. Since there are a lot more factors taken into consideration when deciding whether or not a pass is …show more content…
2 If this is not considered it makes Ryan Longwell look like he’s still one of the better kickers in the NFL. His 94% field goal percentage led the league for all kickers with 15 or more tries. When you consider that 16 of his 18 kicks were on attempts of less than 40 yards and none were from beyond 50 yards, it’s a lot easier to see his path to such a high percentage. On the other hand, someone like Nate Kaeding of the Chargers looks better than his field goal percentage of 82% seems. On kicks between 40 and 50 yards, he made 9 out of 10 kicks, which is a little bit better than the 7 out of 10 an average kicker would be expected to make. He was one of nine kickers who made half or more of his kicks when kicking the ball further than 40 yards. Distance is one thing to consider, but there are also other conditions that play roles: was the game played inside or outside, if it was played outside, what was the weather like and what was the wind speed, were the kicker’s snapper and holder on the mark, was his line of defense keeping blockers away? Everyone knows that distance