On January 21, 2024, Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills started the final drive of their season at their own 20-yard line, trailing the Kansas City Chiefs 24-27 in their Divisional Round playoff matchup. Kansas City stopped Allen and the Bills’ offense short on third down after 16 plays and 54 yards; Tyler Bass lined up for a 44-yard game-tying field goal and missed.
The Chiefs won the game and their second Super Bowl in a row a few weeks later. Kansas City’s path to the Super Bowl was not easy this season. They had to win on the road in Buffalo and then Baltimore leading up to the big game in Las Vegas. But they were the beneficiaries of a missed kick in Buffalo.
Most people will focus on the quarterback play after watching the Chiefs defeat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime to win their third Super Bowl since 2019. Specifically, Patrick Mahomes and his Thanos-like inevitability at the end of big games. It makes sense. Quarterback is the most important position in football, and the spotlight tends to be directed toward the signal callers, for better or worse. The quarterback play on Sunday was nothing to scoff at, but Super Bowl LVIII was also a great example of something Minnesota Vikings fans know well.
Kickers can decide football games, too.
Vikings fans are no strangers to missed field goals in playoff games. The 2015 Wild Card game and 1998 NFC Championship stand out as two of the most traumatic. Kickers and their misses have hurt many NFL franchises, but the Vikings and Bills seem cursed with a better understanding of the fragility and potential horrors of placekickers than most. That’s what makes what we saw in Super Bowl LVIII so impressive.
With most of the country watching and the stakes at their highest, San Francisco and Kansas City’s kickers rose to the occasion. Jake Moody opened the scoring with a Super Bowl record-long 55-yard kick. But Harrison Butker’s 57-yard missile in the third quarter made Moody’s record short-lived. To top it off, both men combined for four made field goals in the fourth quarter and overtime, including a 53-yard bomb from Moody and the Butker kick that sent the game into overtime with only three seconds left on the clock. It feels like a slight for either of these kickers not to have an Adam Vinatieri-like Super Bowl moment.
It seems like the only time we discuss kickers is when they miss. Our analysis often focuses on a kicker’s failures in big games or moments. If we can’t find any, we move our review to a different position on the field. Can you recall any kicker outside of Vinateri whose game-winning kick or long-term consistency made them a favorite among media or a fanbase? Maybe Justin Tucker in Baltimore deserves to be in the conversation. The point is, there aren’t many statues of kickers outside of NFL stadiums, even though their performances have and will continue to decide the outcome of the most important games of the NFL season.
As Bills (and Vikings) fans know, finding a trustworthy kicker is difficult. As it tends to happen in the NFL, the rich get richer, and Kansas City and the Niners seem to have found trustworthy kickers for the foreseeable future. San Francisco selected Jake Moody in the third round of the 2023 draft.
Vikings fans might remember drafting a promising kicker named Daniel Carlson with a fifth-round pick in 2018. He was the leading scorer in SEC history and had never missed an extra point coming out of Auburn. It’s an understatement to say that Moody had a much better rookie campaign than Carlson. The Vikings released Carlson after he made only one of four attempts (but a perfect 6/6 on extra points!) in only two games.
Harrison Butker has been kicking for Kansas City since 2017. He has made 89% of his field goals and 94% of his extra points in that time. He was also 12/12 on kicks over 40 yards this season, including 5/5 on 50-plus yarders.
If you are still looking for proof of kicks influencing outcomes, look no further than the blocked extra point in Sunday’s game. From a strategic standpoint, it forced the coaches of both teams to adjust because a field goal could tie the game. When Butker and Moody made attempts of over 50 yards, it greatly affected how both coaches called the rest of the game.
Tyler Bass made 82% of his kicks for Buffalo this season, his worst percentage since his rookie year in 2020. For context, the league average for field goals in 2023 was 85.9%, and Greg Joseph made only 80% of his field goals this season.
In January, Bills fans watched their kicker let them down in the biggest moment of their season. Kickers have repeatedly left the Vikings down by kickers in playoff games.
Sunday night, in the season’s most important game, both teams’ kickers stepped up in a big way under the brightest lights.
