N/S NFL Kickers better than ever (1 Viewer)

[SweetT]

It would also get more attempts to go for the first on 4th downs and that is always an exciting play.

Excellent point

 

[Saint KayBee]

I remember a couple years ago listening to the Dan Le Batard show, and they were discussing Jason Sanders’ accuracy after a game where he made multiple field goals.

We’re at a point now where all a team’s current kicker has to do is attempt enough field goals to qualify, and he’ll wind up as their most accurate kicker in team history.

For example, Anders Carlson, 2023 kicker for the Packers, went 27/33 on field goals last year, good enough to sneak him past Ryan Longwell and Mason Crosby for the top spot on their all-time list… but he also missed five XPs (Longwell and Crosby each only missed four on the shorter XP, with Crosby missing another 16 in the eight years he spent kicking the longer ones), and Carlson had some misses vs. SF in the playoffs last season, so they brought in competition this spring. Rookie Brayden Narveson has replaced him in 2024, and you can already find local beat articles preaching patience with him (he’s 6/8 on field goals for the year so far, and made all three of his XPs). Now imagine me not knowing any of this before randomly deciding to select the Packers to make this point. Kicking has come such a long way.

 

[WallyBB]

Justin Tucker died for this

 

[Artifactual]

If this trend continues I can see talk of narrowing the goal posts start.

There was talk of narrowing the goal posts back in 2015 when the league experimented with it at the Pro Bowl that year.

Excerpts from a 1/20/15 article by Josh Weinfuss, ESPN Staff Writer, as viewed at www.espn.com

NFL tries smaller posts, longer PATs​

Adam Vinatieri and Cody Parkey won't have as easy of a Pro Bowl as they were expecting.

The NFL is narrowing the goalposts for Sunday's game, moving them from 18.6 feet wide to 14 feet wide, NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said at a Pro Bowl news conference Tuesday at the Arizona Biltmore.

And as the league did early in the preseason, extra points will be moved back to the 15-yard-line, making them 33.5-yard attempts, Vincent added.

"It'll allow us to see exactly how skilled the kicker position has actually become," Vincent said.

Kickers made 83.9 percent of all field goals in 2014 -- including 77.4 percent from 40 to 49 yards and 61 percent of field goals 50 yards or longer -- and 99.3 percent of extra points.

The NFL experimented with moving extra points back to the 15-yard line during the first two preseason games of 2014 and the results didn't change much -- only eight PATs were missed in 141 attempts (94.3 percent). By comparison, only eight extra points out of 1,230 attempts were missed during the 2014 regular season.

Full Article In Link Below:

Narrower goalposts, longer PATs in Pro Bowl

The NFL will have narrower uprights and longer kicks for extra-point tries at the Pro Bowl.

www.espn.com

Then this...Excerpts from a 1/26/15 Staff article Around The NFL as viewed at www.nfl.com

Adam Vinatieri not 'happy' with narrower goal posts​

Adam Vinatieri handled the circumstances with grace on Sunday, but beneath the veteran kicker's gentle facade stood a player who couldn't help but wonder if his position group was getting picked on a bit.

Specifically, Vinatieri wondered how significant the league's average field goal percentage would dip with the narrowed uprights that the NFL experimented with on Sunday.

Vinatieri missed a pair of 35-yard extra points, and a 38-yard field goal after having fewer than five attempts on the new posts before Sunday.

"Ask a receiver, can we take his gloves off because he's catching the ball too well?" Vinatieri said on the field following Team Irvin's 32-28 victory. "Nobody is going to be overly happy about that. But I understand the wheels of change are in motion and people want to change stuff, but I feel bad for the young bucks that will have to deal with it their whole career."

Vinatieri said that a change could make kickers more valuable, but that it will also alter the way a team operates inside their opponent's 40-yard line.
"Yeah, I mean obviously," he said. "I don't know, there was an 83 or 84 percent field goal accuracy this past year, I think this would knock it down to ... I don't know. I do know one thing, I doubt there would be as many 50-yarders attempted because the percentage would go way down."

But on the flip side, how much more exciting does it make a game when the odds of an extra point decrease so significantly? How much better does a matchup become when field goals decrease by 10 percent in reliability?

Full Article In Link Below:

Adam Vinatieri not 'happy' with narrower goal posts

And this from the company website at:

Football Field Goal Pro Posts for Kickers- Simple Kicking

Pro-Posts are a second set of uprights attached inside of the standard-width fieldgoalz creating a narrower space for kickers in practice.

simplekicking.com

Call them skinny field goal posts, narrow uprights, thinner goal posts, or arena uprights. The Pro-Posts are a second set of uprights (9 feet) attached to the inside of the standard-width uprights (18 feet 6 inches.) It narrows the space that a kicker can make a kick for practice. Kickers who aim small on Pro-Posts, miss small in games.

Since 2002, the most common margin of victory in the NFL has been 3 points with 418 games out of 2,668 games. This is equivalent to 15.67% of games finishing with a 3 point difference between the winner and loser at the end of the game (sporting charts).

Pro-Posts create a narrower channel, forcing kickers to concentrate on kicking through a much more difficult target. Kickers have to make more accurate kicks in practice, which translates to more points in games. Combined with the Simple Kicking App, kickers significantly increase the chances of winning more games.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

IIRC, Morten Anderson began practicing on narrow uprights. Garrett Hartley did as well. I haven't seen anything about Saints recent kicker Will Lutz or current kicker Blake Grupe doing so, but it appears to have been a common practice around the league over the past 25 years or so.

Narrowing the goal posts for NFL kickers would change the game in a number of ways. First, the accuracy of FGs, especially at longer distances, would decrease significantly. Secondly, there would be more routine misses of extra point attempts. Coaches would have to reconsider either going for it or punting more often in situations that are now standard practice to attempt a FG.

 

[Artifactual]

Excerpts from a 9/19/24 article by John Breech of CBS Sports as viewed at www.cbssports.com

• There have been more field goals (141) than touchdowns (136) through two weeks. This marks the first time in NFL history that there have been more field goals than touchdowns through the first two weeks of the season. If the field goal number stays ahead of the touchdown number, we'll see another NFL first because there has NEVER been a season in league history where there have been more field goals than touchdowns.

• Most field goals ever in a single week (73 in Week 2). If your Fantasy kicker scored you a ton of points in Week 2, you're not alone. There were a total of 73 field goals kicked in Week 2, which set the NFL record for a single week. There were 68 field goals in Week 1, which is the third-most ever for a single week.

• Two distance records. Through the first two weeks of the season, kickers have combined to hit 35 of 39 field goals from 50 yards or longer. To put that number in perspective, just consider this: As recently as 2006, there were only 40 field goals from 50 yards or longer for the ENTIRE SEASON and this year's kickers have almost passed that number through two weeks. Their 89.7% conversion rate on long field goals is also the highest accuracy rate ever in any season where there's been at least 15 attempts through the first two weeks.

Full Article In Link Below:

2024 NFL kicker rankings: Ravens star Justin Tucker drops from No. 1 with surprise name now at the top

That's right, we're ranking kickers

www.cbssports.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

In the first 70 years of its existence, the NFL saw two successful field goals struck from 60-plus yards.

Brandon Aubrey, the Dallas Cowboys kicker, has already hit two this season alone.

Aubrey, a former professional soccer player once drafted by MLS’s Toronto FC, equalled a franchise record when he converted from 65 yards against the Baltimore Ravens last month.

His effort, which sailed between the uprights with several feet to spare, was just one yard shy of the all-time NFL record by Justin Tucker, his opposite number on the day, set in 2021. Aubrey knocked another one through from 51 yards later the same game.

And Aubrey isn’t the only NFL kicker starring in the early weeks of the new season.

In Week 4, the New England Patriots’ Joey Slye hit one from 63 yards. Across the first two weeks of the season, there were 39 field goals attempted from 50-plus yards. Only four missed. That success rate of 89.7% was the highest through the first two weeks of a campaign since 2008, when only 11 field goals of 50-plus yards were attempted.

As it stands through Week 5, not accounting for the Monday night game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New Orleans Saints, the overall league-wide field goal success rate of 86.3% is the second-highest average in NFL history.

So what is behind this recent boom?

John Carney, a Super Bowl-champion kicker with the New Orleans Saints who now runs Carney Coaching, thinks technological advancements have played a key role.

“We have this little guy,” he says, raising his iPhone. “That’s very beneficial. Anybody can go out on the field, set this up and get some really good video to troubleshoot. Maybe their contact is off. Maybe their swing path is off. They can troubleshoot very quickly.

“In the past, very rarely did I have anyone available to record me. And if I did, it was a camcorder, VHS. Then you had to go back and plug that into a TV. The quality wasn’t very good. You might be missing the frame of the foot hitting the ball that you needed to fine-tune your contact.

“And there’s more quality coaching available now than there was in the past. More former players and specials teams coaches from the NFL have made themselves available to coach punting and kicking at the high school and college levels. That has been a great feeder system to make sure young kickers are getting the proper mechanics, proper instruction … Guys aren’t forced to go to a field with a bag of balls and figure it out for themselves.”………

‘We may see a 70-yarder’: NFL kickers are excelling. How much better can they get?

The league is seeing successful kicks that once seemed unimaginable become routine. What’s behind the upsurge in performance?

www.theguardian.com