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Ryan Paganetti, a former NFL team analytics guy, says he has uncovered a small but calculated piece of Patriots “gamesmanship” that played out at Gillette Stadium for more than a decade. Paganetti has a football resume to back up the claim. He spent 10 years in the NFL, six of them with the Philadelphia Eagles from 2015 to 2021. There, he ran analytics and handled in-game decisions like fourth-down calls and two-point conversions from the press box for coach Doug Pederson, including during the Eagles’ Super Bowl LII win over the Patriots in 2018. He later worked in analytics for the Jacksonville Jaguars and, most recently, served as head coach research specialist for the Las Vegas Raiders under Pete Carroll. Paganetti is a Bedford, Massachusetts native who played running back at Dartmouth. A reversed set of uprights on the video board Paganetti said he reviewed more than a decade of TV broadcasts and found that when opposing kickers lined up for field goals at Gillette Stadium, the video board behind the uprights displayed a reversed view of the kick. That reversed view placed a second, offset set of yellow uprights directly behind the physical ones. In windy conditions, he said, orange streamers shown on the video board even appeared to point in the opposite direction from the physical streamers atop the uprights, adding to the disorienting effect. Paganetti said he found dozens of examples of the illusion showing up on opposing teams’ kicks. Reviewing the same games, he checked 52 Patriots field goal attempts and said the illusion never once appeared on New England’s own kicks. He also said the Eagles tried copying the tactic, but the location of the video boards at Lincoln Financial Field made the attempt largely ineffective. MORE: NFC power rankings now that Aaron Donald is officially back Reaction split between admiration and accusations of cheating The claim drew a strong reaction online, including from Pat McAfee, who called it “a great piece of intel” in a post that has drawn more than a million views. Reaction has been split. Some commenters argued the tactic was legal and simply smart use of the rulebook, while others called it an exploitation of a gap in the rules that ran against the spirit of fair play. Gillette Stadium’s video board has been a known factor in the kicking game before. The Patriots installed a new 370-by-60-foot board in 2023, and Bill Belichick said at the time that the larger screen was changing wind patterns inside the stadium and affecting kickers. MORE: Dylan Sampson, Jonah Coleman among the best late-round RB sleepers — Enjoy free coverage of the top news & trending stories with The Big Lead Newsletter —