In the first 70 years of its existence, the NFL saw two successful field goals from more than 60 yards.
Dallas Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey He has already achieved two this season alone.
Aubrey, a former professional soccer player once drafted by Toronto FC of the MLS, tied a franchise record when he converted from 65 yards against the Baltimore Ravens last month. His effort, which went between the posts several meters ahead, was just a meter away. the all-time NFL record by Justin Tuckerits counterpart for the day, set for 2021. Aubrey scored another from 51 yards later in the same game.
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And Aubrey isn’t the only NFL kicker starring in the first few weeks of the new season. In Week 4, Joey Slye of the New England Patriots hit one from 63 yards. Through the first two weeks of the season, 39 field goals were attempted from greater than 50 yards. Only four were missing. That 89.7% success rate was the highest through the first two weeks of a season since 2008, when only 11 field goals of 50-plus yards were attempted. As it stands through Week 5, excluding Monday night’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and New Orleans Saints, the overall league-wide field goal success rate of 86.3% is the second highest average in NFL history.
So what’s behind this recent boom?
John Carney, a Super Bowl champion kicker with the New Orleans Saints who now runs Carney Coaching, believes technological advances have played a key role.
“We have this little one,” he says, holding up his iPhone. “That is very beneficial. Anyone can go out into the field, set this up, and get a really good video for troubleshooting. Maybe your contact is cut off. Maybe your swing path is off. They can solve problems very quickly.
“In the past, I very rarely had anyone available to record me. And if I did, it was a camcorder, VHS. Then you had to go back and connect it to a television. The quality was not very good. You may be missing the structure of your ball-striking foot that you needed to fine-tune your contact.
“And there is more quality training available now than in the past. More former NFL special teams players and coaches have made themselves available to coach kicking and punting at the high school and college levels. That’s been a great feeder system to make sure young kickers get the right mechanics, the right instruction…Guys aren’t forced to go out on the field with a bag of balls and figure it out for themselves.”
There is also the element of trust. As kickers have demonstrated their ability to convert at high percentages over increasing distances, coaches are more willing to turn to long-range field goals as a means of getting points on the board.
“Ten years ago there were a handful of kickers who could kick the ball the same distance,” says Stephen Hauschka, who won Super Bowl XLVIII with the Seattle Seahawks and set an NFL record for most consecutive field goals. scored from more than 50 yards. . “But now we’re seeing two things: The coaches are willing to take these shots and then the kickers are proving themselves.
“The bar has been raised. It’s like the four-minute mile. Once it was broken, a group of people broke it. The same goes for kicks. Coaches are seeing that it is possible to kick from age 55 onwards, and they are doing it and getting rewarded for it.
“The kicker has to be in one of the five most important positions in the game. A good kicker can win you a few games a season. When you see a guy like Brandon Aubrey raising the bar and redefining what’s possible out there, and the Cowboys trust him in that, I see the value of a kicker go up.”
Carney agrees. “I think the coaches’ mentality has changed: ‘We have a very talented kicker on our team; Let him have that opportunity,’” he says.
Improvements in practice, athleticism and technology are reflected in place kicking. With year-over-year rule changes, improved teams, and a greater focus on player well-being, today’s NFL is barely recognizable in the grainy images of early stadiums; Comparing, say, the wide receivers or quarterbacks of 2024 to their counterparts from 50 years ago is an exercise in futility, so much has football changed.
But the task of a kicker in today’s NFL, in approach and optics, is barely different from kicking in decades past, at least since the goalposts were moved from the goal line to the baseline in 1974. And in the middle of the In the jargon-filled world of modern analytics, field goal distances and success rates are as easily digestible as any sports metric you can find.
“Just as we saw all these world records broken this year at the Summer Olympics, this will happen again due to advances in training, training methods, technology and sports science,” says Carney. “It helps athletes improve at a light-speed level.”
But Hauschka preaches caution to those who get giddy with early-season statistics. Experience taught him that as the year progresses, the kicker’s job becomes more difficult. Expect, at least to some extent, a regression by the time winter arrives.
“It’s early in the season,” adds Hauschka. “The weather is good. The boys’ legs are fresh, their minds are fresh. It is towards the end of the season when things get more difficult.”
Still, there is little doubt that kicking in the NFL has progressed over the past decade to a level that would have been unimaginable in decades past. So how far can NFL kickers go (literally and figuratively)?
“The Cowboys build a dome, so that’s something they can do year-round,” Hauschka says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the record (for longest field goal) is broken this year.”
Carney, who worked with Aubrey early in his transition from soccer to kicking, also expects the records to drop in the near future.
“He’s incredibly talented,” he says of the Dallas kicker. “What he is doing is incredible. Maybe he’ll end up being the best kicker in NFL history as he’s moving forward. There are some great legs out there. I’m excited to see who steps up and breaks that… record. It’s exciting for the fans and great for the game.
“You want to see Babe Ruth hit that record-breaking home run. We might see a 70-yard dash this year.”
