Now that everyone has seen that NFL kickers can pretty much score from anywhere inside the parking lot, doesn’t anyone see that as a problem?
On Sunday, Cam Little kicked a 68-yard field goal for the Jacksonville Jaguars on the final play of the first half — a kick so strong that it would’ve been good from 72 yards.
This continues a trend. The season is barely half finished, but already it has produced three of the five longest field goals ever and almost added another to the list. On Monday night, Brandon Aubrey of the Dallas Cowboys attempted a 68-yard field goal that appeared to be long enough, but was wide left.
It’s only a matter of time before someone kicks a 70-yard field goal — Little kicked a 70-yarder in August, but it doesn’t count for record purposes because it occurred during the exhibition season.
So far this season, six NFL kickers have made a total of seven field goals of 60 yards or longer.
The reason for this: a rule change allows kickers to mold and manipulate the football, making it more conducive to kicking. More on this later.
Why are these booming kicks a problem?
They have shrunk the field. It might still measure 100 yards long, but now that kickers can connect from 70 yards, it has, in effect, shortened the field.
The Jaguars had to reach only the 50-yard line to put Little within kicking range — remember, the uprights are 10 yards deep in the end zone, plus the holder sets up 7-8 yards behind the line of scrimmage.
Punters could soon be rendered obsolete.
To kick a 70-yarder, a team only needs to reach their own 48-yard line. This means that when teams take possession of the ball at the 20-yard line, they must gain only 28 yards to score.
A drive to the opponents’ 42-yard line sets up a 60-yard field goal — a workable distance for a lot of kickers in the league.
Doesn’t that seem, well, wrong? What is this, soccer? Do we really want to watch the equivalent of a PK?
A team that trails by a field goal or less in the final seconds is virtually impossible to stop. The odds were already tipped in the offense’s favor — with incomplete passes stopping the clock, and teams easily able to get 10 yards on four downs — and now this.
Something has changed. In 1970, 55 years ago, Tom Dempsey of the New Orleans Saints kicked a 63-yard field goal. That stood as the NFL record for 43 years, although it was tied three times — Jason Elam in 1998, Sebastian Janikowski in 2011 and David Akers in 2012. Matt Prater finally broke the record in 2013 with a kick of 64 yards. Justin Tucker broke Prater’s record with a 66-yard kick in 2021. It survived until Little’s kick on Sunday.
It was bound to happen given the changes in the kicking rules. It’s doubtful that Little’s record will survive long.
A whopping 16 kickers have connected from 57 yards and beyond this season (22 from 55 yards or better), six from beyond 60 yards.
So far this season, we have seen:
- Little kicked the record 68-yarder in Sunday’s game against Las Vegas.
- Tampa Bay’s Chase McLaughlin kicked a field goal from 65 yards.
- Aubrey, who has kicked an NFL-record five career field goals of 60 yards or more after only three years in the league, kicked field goals of 65 and 64 yards this season.
- Will Reichard of the Vikings kicked a 62-yarder.
- The Packers’ Lucas Havrisik kicked a 61-yarder.
- The Steelers’ Chris Boswell kicked a game-winning 60-yarder.
The sudden trend in long field goals can be attributed to offseason changes in the rules. Previously, kickers were given three new footballs on game day, which didn’t leave them much time to break them in.
Under the rule change, each team was allotted 60 kicking balls at the start of the season, giving kickers weeks to break them in — all the squeezing, massaging and manipulating makes the ball smoother and more pliable and thus easier to kick long and accurately.
Reportedly, kickers use brushes and towels to remove a coating on the ball, break in the hard seams with repeated squeezing and ultimately produce a softer, less slippery surface. Given the sudden improvement in kicking, all this manipulation apparently works.
“These kicking balls that they changed this year have drastically changed the kicking game, field goals in particular,” said Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio after watching McLaughlin make field goals of 65 and 58 yards against his team. “So it’s almost like they need an asterisk here. It was the live ball era or the asterisk for those home runs (Barry) Bonds and (Sammy) Sosa and (Mark) McGwire were hitting. The way they’ve changed the ball … the kicking ball has drastically changed the field goals.”
“ … In years past, the officials would rub them down or other people would rub them down and you play with them. Now the balls are in-house all week and they kick those balls that they’ve had and nobody else touches them.”
Whatever the reason, the NFL has undergone a dramatic change thanks to the performance of kickers.
