Football's Kicker Paradox

By Vick A. '27

***WRITTEN WITH DATA ENDING AFTER THE FIRST WEEK OF THE PLAYOFFS**

One of the fundamental axioms of football is that fans will always hate kickers. No matter how well they play, one simple miss will attract a level of criticism and hate that most players won’t experience in their lifetime. As time goes on, kickers have progressively gotten better and better. Now, kickers routinely take 50+ yard field goals, something unheard of even 15 years ago. But even with the modern kickers' success and accuracy, they feel more hated than ever. After only a couple of misses, a kicker can be hounded from his team, harassed online by fans, and maybe even cut. Take Younghoe Koo, who had previously had a relatively successful career: after missing a game-tying field goal in week 1 with the Falcons, he was cut the next day. Now this is a guy who has been about league average, and he got cut for one missed field goal. 

However, Koo getting cut in week one didn’t spark the writing of this article. In the past two weeks of football, three kickers have missed kicks that have cost their teams their season. First, in week 18, Tyler Loop missed the game-winning field goal, eliminating his team, the Ravens, in a winner-takes-all matchup versus the Steelers. Then, on Saturday, Packers kicker Brian McManus missed not one but two field goals, along with an extra point to boot, as the Packers lost by four. Finally, to wrap up the weekend, the Eagles’ Jake Elliot missed an extra point that, if he had hit, would’ve allowed the Eagles to tie the game via field goal rather than going for a touchdown on their final drive. Despite kickers being better than ever, in the span of seven days, three kickers cost their teams their seasons. In fact, in quite a convoluted way, if Younghoe Koo had made that game-tying field goal week one for the Falcons and they had gone on to win that game, they would’ve made the playoffs, but for the sake of simplicity lets ignore that. So, from this data, what does it seem like we have learned? NFL kickers have the clutch ability of a wet paper towel. But this belief, despite what seems like clear examples, is incredibly wrong.

Firstly, let’s look at the numbers. This year, NFL kickers had an average conversion rate on any given field goal of about 86% (calculated with data from ESPN), and this number only drops a measly one percent when looking at the playoffs this year. Take this with a grain of salt, as the sample size is significantly smaller for the NFL playoffs. So let’s solve this problem and expand. Upon looking at all field goal attempts since 2010, kickers have an average conversion rate of 84%. Not bad. However, in the playoffs in that same timeframe, kickers have an average conversion rate of 88%. Spicy. Obviously, there is still a sample size issue between the regular season and playoffs, but I think that a 4% positive difference at least suggests that there is no significant decline in performance between the regular season and the playoffs. So, despite what our intuition might say, there is no real difference between playoff and regular season performance. However, that was just looking at playoff kicks, not game-winning kicks. Unfortunately, there is no clear way to look for game-winning field goals (that I could find, at least without scraping through every single NFL game), so I had to resort to articles about the subject. What I found confirmed my theory; once again, there is no difference between game-winning and regular field goal percentages for both playoffs and regular season. So despite what our eyes see, it seems like NFL kickers aren’t that bad after all. 

So it appears we have a paradox. Somehow, NFL kickers seem to miss in the clutch and not be reliable for the most routine plays (shoutout to Jake Elliot’s 6 missed extra points in the playoffs, tied most all time), yet the numbers say otherwise. So what’s going on? My best theory is that we simply fail to realize when a kicker makes a field goal. Obviously, our mind processes that the ball went through the uprights and 3 points were added to the scoreboard, but we don’t actually process the success of the kick. When we see a touchdown, we jump up and celebrate the result. Why? Firstly and most obviously, a touchdown is worth 6 points, whereas a field goal is worth 3. But more interestingly, we celebrate because at the start of the play, we didn’t know if it would be a touchdown or not, and our minds hadn’t decided that points would be added to our score. That’s a confusing statement, so let me elaborate. Imagine its 1st&10 at the opponent's 15. Our QB throws a back shoulder fade to a WR in the endzone who hauls it in for the touchdown, a play that will most certainly be on SportsCenter later that night. Before the ball was snapped, we had no preconceived notion that the play would end in a touchdown. For all we know, it could’ve been a five-yard run. Even if the play hadn’t resulted in a touchdown, we most likely would’ve been happy with the result. I wouldn’t be mad at a 13-yard pass that brings us to the opponent's 2-yard line. Here’s where the key difference is: unlike touchdowns, before the ball is snapped on both extra points and field goals, we already expect the ball to go through the uprights as a near guarantee, and when it doesn’t its a disappointment. We have already mentally added the three points for our team before the play happens, whereas for touchdowns, we haven't. Here is where the paradox emerges. Because we already expect the ball to fly through the uprights, when it doesn’t, it’s a direct shock to us, and rather than mentally adding three points to oue teams score (as we would add six for a touchdown), we mentally subtract three points from our team's score. It doesn’t feel like we remained at the status quo, but rather that we lost points. This is where kickers suffer. Because we take their job for granted, when they fail, we notice it. We don’t notice as often when our team has a three-and-out or fails to convert a third down, but when a kicker misses a field goal, we will remember. That is the problem — not the kickers themselves, but our own preconceived notions of the kickers. 

So how do we fix this paradox? Nobody likes getting mad at their kicker, and kickers don’t like missing. There are two ways to go about fixing the problem: improve us or improve the kickers. Firstly, we can simply change our mentality to assume our kicker will miss. I don’t like being a pessimist as much as the next person, but in this case, lowering expectations might be the answer. But here is the better solution, for both the team and the fans: improve kickers. But how? Let’s start by looking at Brandon Aubrey, one of the league's premier kickers. Aubrey played soccer his whole life, was drafted into the MLS, and was a B-team player. After converting to football and a short stint in the XFL, he became one of NFLs best. So what I’m seeing is that a B-team player in 10th or 12th (as per OPTA), best league in the world, was able to become one of, if not the NFL's best kickers within a couple of years of training. So here is where the solution is. A college scout hops on a boat to the UK, Spain, or practically anywhere in Western Europe or South America and goes to the local youth U19 academy. Here are kids who have spent their whole lives playing soccer and spend their whole days training. A lot of these players won’t make it pro, and right now, the very best U19 players are being paid $10,000 a year on the top end. Show these kids how a rookie contract for a kicker is about $900,000, and the best get over $6,000,000, and I’m sure many of them will be happy to enter into college football and then go into the draft. These kids, who would’ve most likely been cut within a year or two, are now allowed to earn a heck of a lot more money than they can imagine. And mind you, these kids are infinitely better than Brandon Aubrey in terms of pure foot-to-ball skills and coordination. Not only that, but these kids aren’t bothered by pressure. Penalties and penalty shoutouts are near replicas of field goals, where the whole team expects you to score, but in this case, there is a goalkeeper actively preventing you from scoring. If given a couple of years to play in college, I can practically guarantee you they will be miles better than the NFL’s average kicker, and we have an example in Brandon Aubrey. 

So there you have it, all laid out. NFL kickers aren’t unclutch. They are practically the same in any given moment, whether it be playoffs or game winners. The problem is that in our minds, we frame the kick as already being made before the ball has been snapped, so when they miss (about 15% of the time), we are disappointed, and it feels like we are subtracting three points from our score. However, just because kickers aren’t unclutch doesn’t mean they can't be better. Brandon Aubrey provides us with the perfect blueprint of how well soccer players translate to the NFL as kickers, and there is a boatload of opportunity in that field.