The Texans' Most Reliable Offense Starts at Midfield

Fairbairn's 58 and 57 were Houston's only first-half points

On Sunday, with the Giants in town and Houston favored by 10, the Texans' first scoring drive ended at the New York 40. Ka'imi Fairbairn made it count from 58 yards. Their next one stalled at the 39. He hit from 57.

Those were the Houston Texans' only points of the first half. They lost 27-21 in overtime, fell to 2-5, and are still winless at home. But the two kicks told a story the scoreboard didn't: right now, the most dependable thing the Houston offense does is get Fairbairn to midfield.

Two kicks most kickers miss about a third of the time

Our model puts a 58-yarder under a closed roof at about 63% for an average NFL kicker, and a 57-yarder at about 66%. Make both in one game and you have beaten odds of roughly 42%.

It has not happened often. Since 2021, a kicker has made two field goals of 57 yards or longer in the same game just six times. Brandon Aubrey has three of those games. Joshua Karty and Chase McLaughlin have one each. Fairbairn's on Sunday is the sixth.

Long kicks are familiar ground for him. In 2024 he became the first kicker in NFL history with six 50-plus field goals in a two-game span. Sunday's 57 also matched the Texans' old franchise record, shared by Neil Rackers and Kris Brown, before Fairbairn broke it with a 61-yarder. See where the longest kicks rank on our longest NFL field goals page.

The contrast with the other sideline was hard to miss. Giants kicker Dominic Zvada missed from 56 and from 44, both wide right. Regulation ended 21-21. Fairbairn's six points were the margin that got Houston to overtime at all.

The kicker as the offense

Here is the Texans' season in numbers, through seven games:

Source: nflverse play-by-play, regular season through Week 7.

Houston has tried nearly as many field goals as it has scored touchdowns. Against the Giants, C.J. Stroud threw for a season-low 153 yards and the Texans went 3 for 12 on third down. When a drive dies near midfield, the alternative to Fairbairn is a punt.

He has been close to automatic. Fairbairn is 15 of 16 on field goals and 16 of 16 on extra points. He is 6 of 7 from 50 yards and beyond. His only miss was a 58-yarder that fell short in Week 2 against Cincinnati.

This is not just a hot streak. Fairbairn led the NFL with 44 field goals last season, tying the single-season record, and finished second among kickers with 160 points. Through seven weeks of 2026 he is tied for the league lead in 50-yard makes.

He is also the leading scorer in Texans history. He passed Kris Brown for the franchise record in 2024, in the same game he beat Buffalo with a 59-yarder as time expired.

One of Houston's two wins this season came off his foot. Tied 31-31 at Wembley in Week 6, he made a 49-yarder with three seconds left to beat Jacksonville, our pick in NFL Kicks of the Week, Week 6: Ka'imi Fairbairn Answers From 49 at Wembley.

Where he stands in the MAKE Rankings

MAKE, Makes Above Kicks Expected, gives a kicker credit for every make relative to how often an average kicker makes that kick. We estimate that chance from thousands of recent NFL attempts, adjusting for distance, roof, altitude, cold and wind. A chip shot is worth almost nothing. A 58-yarder indoors is worth more than a third of a field goal. The MAKE explainer shows how it works.

That is why distance matters so much to Fairbairn's number. An average kicker would have made about 12.9 of his 16 attempts. He made 15, which puts him at +2.12 MAKE, fourth in the MAKE Rankings.

Source: FKS MAKE, NFL regular season through Week 7. Ranked kickers need at least six attempts, our full-season minimum scaled to the weeks played.

Sunday alone was worth +0.71, moving him up from sixth. Per 100 kicks he is at +13.2, level with Reichard and ahead of Shrader, both of whom have had more chances.

For coaches, the most useful part of MAKE is not the rank but the gap at each distance: when your kicker keeps beating the expected rate from a given range, that range belongs in your field-goal plan rather than your punt plan.

What it means for Houston

Seven of Fairbairn's 16 attempts have come from 50 yards or more. That is partly a sign of where Houston's drives have been ending, and partly a sign of how much his coaches trust him.

The trust is earned, and Houston has paid for it with a two-year, $13 million extension in March. At his current rate from 50-plus, a fourth down at the opponent's 40 is a scoring chance for the Texans, not a punting decision. That widens Houston's scoring range by several yards compared with most teams.

MAKE measures the kicker, not the drive, so the two questions stay separate. Fairbairn is turning long chances into points at an elite rate. Turning more of those midfield stops into red-zone trips is the offense's job.

The range started in Honolulu. Fairbairn learned to kick at Punahou School, then kicked in college at UCLA. Both pages trace the NFL and college specialists who came through those programs.

The Texans are off this week, then visit the Chargers in Week 9. Wherever their drives stall, they know who they can send out. For the rest of the week's best kicks, see NFL Kicks of the Week, Week 7: Cairo Santos Ties the Bears Record From 58.

Data: nflverse (CC BY 4.0), regular seasons 2024 and 2025; calculations by FKS.