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DOES IT MATTER WHERE IT IS KICKED? ANALYSIS OF OVER 10,000 ATTEMPTS



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In our third of not one, not two, but three posts on kicking a football in the NFL, we take on a reader question of whether the stadium / home team matters for making a field goal. We pulled up the data on every field goal since 2002 (over 10,000) of them and plotted the probability of scoring as a function of the stadium in which the field goal was kicked. The results are above. Bars are +/- 1 standard error.

Is it a statistically significant effect? Apparently so:

Pearson's Chi-squared test X-squared = 49.9556, df = 31, p-value = 0.01693

ADDENDUM 1

We had a request to see the broken down by home team or visiting team kicking. Here you go:



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ADDENDUM 2:

Owing to the generosity of the great reader / Scottish economist Adam Smith (see comments), we now have the stadiums broken down by door (indoor or outdoor). The gray stadiums are either convertible (Houston) or have a small hole in the roof (Dallas).

Correlation is not causation, but it sure does seem plausible that having an indoor stadium helps the kicker.



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APPENDIX

To decode the team names, use this list:

ARI: Arizona Cardinals ATL: Atlanta Falcons BAL: Baltimore Ravens BUF: Buffalo Bills CAR: Carolina Panthers CHI: Chicago Bears CIN: Cincinnati Bengals CLE: Cleveland Browns DAL: Dallas Cowboys DEN: Denver Broncos DET: Detroit Lions GB: Green Bay Packers HOU: Houston Texans IND: Indianapolis Colts JAX: Jacksonville Jaguars KC: Kansas City Chiefs MIA: Miami Dolphins MIN: Minnesota Vikings NE: New England Patriots NO: New Orleans Saints NYG: New York Giants NYJ: New York Jets OAK: Oakland Raiders PHI: Philadelphia Eagles PIT: Pittsburgh Steelers SD: San Diego Chargers SEA: Seattle Seahawks SF: San Francisco 49ers STL: Saint Louis Rams TB: Tampa Bay Buccaneers TEN Tennessee Titans WAS: Washington Redskins

Figure 1 Data:

Stadium Miss Hit ARI 67 292 ATL 45 257 BAL 45 322 BUF 61 253 CAR 51 269 CHI 64 295 CIN 53 293 CLE 56 266 DAL 53 281 DEN 50 303 DET 34 285 GB 72 274 HOU 53 271 IND 55 308 JAC 64 252 KC 58 285 MIA 58 286 MIN 35 267 NE 63 282 NO 48 285 NYG 59 271 NYJ 50 260 OAK 72 297 PHI 51 300 PIT 65 259 SD 48 258 SEA 55 285 SF 51 289 STL 50 284 TB 58 256 TEN 63 288 WAS 70 254

Figure 2 Data:

ARI Home_Team_Kicks 32 152 Visiting_Team_Kicks 35 140 ATL Home_Team_Kicks 24 142 Visiting_Team_Kicks 21 115 BAL Home_Team_Kicks 23 187 Visiting_Team_Kicks 22 135 BUF Home_Team_Kicks 36 129 Visiting_Team_Kicks 25 124 CAR Home_Team_Kicks 23 125 Visiting_Team_Kicks 28 144 CHI Home_Team_Kicks 32 150 Visiting_Team_Kicks 32 145 CIN Home_Team_Kicks 28 162 Visiting_Team_Kicks 25 131 CLE Home_Team_Kicks 20 130 Visiting_Team_Kicks 36 136 DAL Home_Team_Kicks 30 138 Visiting_Team_Kicks 23 143 DEN Home_Team_Kicks 23 154 Visiting_Team_Kicks 27 149 DET Home_Team_Kicks 17 152 Visiting_Team_Kicks 17 133 GB Home_Team_Kicks 39 144 Visiting_Team_Kicks 33 130 HOU Home_Team_Kicks 32 131 Visiting_Team_Kicks 21 140 IND Home_Team_Kicks 19 166 Visiting_Team_Kicks 36 142 JAC Home_Team_Kicks 36 131 Visiting_Team_Kicks 28 121 KC Home_Team_Kicks 29 127 Visiting_Team_Kicks 29 158 MIA Home_Team_Kicks 32 141 Visiting_Team_Kicks 26 145 MIN Home_Team_Kicks 11 138 Visiting_Team_Kicks 24 129 NE Home_Team_Kicks 30 164 Visiting_Team_Kicks 33 118 NO Home_Team_Kicks 22 129 Visiting_Team_Kicks 26 156 NYG Home_Team_Kicks 27 138 Visiting_Team_Kicks 32 133 NYJ Home_Team_Kicks 26 138 Visiting_Team_Kicks 24 122 OAK Home_Team_Kicks 29 150 Visiting_Team_Kicks 43 147 PHI Home_Team_Kicks 25 176 Visiting_Team_Kicks 26 124 PIT Home_Team_Kicks 34 149 Visiting_Team_Kicks 31 110 SD Home_Team_Kicks 23 134 Visiting_Team_Kicks 25 124 SEA Home_Team_Kicks 19 145 Visiting_Team_Kicks 36 140 SF Home_Team_Kicks 25 156 Visiting_Team_Kicks 26 133 STL Home_Team_Kicks 22 142 Visiting_Team_Kicks 28 142 TB Home_Team_Kicks 30 136 Visiting_Team_Kicks 28 120 TEN Home_Team_Kicks 28 155 Visiting_Team_Kicks 35 133 WAS Home_Team_Kicks 39 124 Visiting_Team_Kicks 31 130

Figure 3 Data: See Figure 1 data plus the comments

Graphs were made in R using Hadley Wickham’s ggplot2 package. Pointer to the data can be found at our previous post.