Field Goals at Heinz
Since the Jets lost due to two missed field goals of 40+ yards on Saturday, and since the announcer mentioned that nobody had ever kidded a field goal of more than 50 yards at Ketchup Field, I thought I'd take a quick look at the recent history of field goal attempts there.
I examined all field goal attempts at Heinz Field for the last two years. There were a total of 63 attempts, of which 53 were good, for a success ratio of 84%. That is above the league average, which is about 82%. Some of that may be due to Pittsburgh's kicker Jeff Reed, who's 31 of 34 for a success rate of 91%; opposing kickers have gone 22 for 29, or 76%. I don't know if there is a home/road advantage to field goal kicking percentage, but it is likely. Visiting teams are more apt to be behind and therefore more likely to attempt longer field goals in an attempt to get back into the game. There is some evidence for this in the record at Heinz Field. Opponents attempted their field goals from an average of 36.2 yards out, while the Steelers attempted theirs from an average distance of 32.6 yards, 3.6 yards closer. And this differential was higher in 2004 at 4.2 yards when the Steelers were more likely to be leading at home than in 2003 at 2.8 yards.
There were only two attempts in the two years of 48 yards or longer; both missed. However, there were 7 attempts from 46-47 yards, and 5 or 71% were good. Let's just present it as a table:
50+ 2 0 0%
46-50 7 5 71%
41-45 11 9 82%
36-40 8 8 100%
31-35 13 12 92%
26-30 8 6 75%
17-25 14 13 93%
This includes the Jets game, so going into that contest, the kickers had made 5 of 6 from 46-50 and 9 of 10 from 41-45, so we can estimate the likelyhood of the Jets making one of those two kicks at about 98.3% going into the game, at 94.8% using the percentages that applied after the two misses. Ouch!
