The opening week of the 2022 NFL season was one to forget for kickers: It featured six missed game-winning attempts, including a ham-fisted 64-yard prayer and a spectacular doink, part of the worst clutch kicking week in at least 22 years (according to a report from The Athletic’s Mike Sando). But even a historically dreadful […]
That NFL kickers are much better than they used to be is not a new development. The leaguewide percentage of made field goals rose steadily in the 2000s and again in the mid-2010s, to the point where kickers can now be expected to make around 84 or 85 percent of their field goals every season. […]
Matt Araiza’s favorite punt of the season was an 81-yard boomer. It wasn’t just the distance that the San Diego State junior enjoyed, but what it did to the punt returner. “It was a moonshot,” Araiza said. “You could see on the film he basically looked like he had never seen anything like that before. […]
sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): If Week 5 of the NFL season taught us anything, it’s that “place-kicker” is not a job for the faint of heart. Or perhaps it taught us (again) that leaving a game up to a kicker is a bad idea. In any case, our friends at ESPN’s Stats & Information […]
Garrison Smith wasn’t expecting an athletic scholarship when he became a placekicker. As soon as he started booting a football, the Ohio high school senior realized he had a knack for it. A soccer transplant, Smith wanted to continue his athletic career in football but had already accepted that he wouldn’t be receiving a full […]