Why Kicking Feels Different: The Wait, the Precision, the Public Verdict
Kicking asks for one precise act after a long wait, in public
Most positions get a chance to settle in. A kicker may stand on the sideline for a quarter or more, then get a few seconds to do one exact thing while everyone watches. Three features make that different: the wait, the precision, and the public verdict.
The wait
In the 2025 NFL regular season, teams attempted 1,088 field goals across 544 team games, an average of 2.0 per game. In 65 of those team games, or 12%, the kicker never attempted one. In 133 more, the kicker attempted exactly one. That counts field goal attempts only, not extra points or kickoffs.
So a kicker's job is often to be ready for something that may not come, and then to be fully ready the moment it does. That is a skill of attention, covered in Staying Ready When You Have Been Waiting All Game.
The precision
NFL goalposts stand 18 feet 6 inches apart. From 50 yards, which is 150 feet, that leaves a corridor of about 3.5 degrees on each side of the center line, before accounting for the width of the ball. From 40 yards it is about 4.4 degrees. Small differences at the foot become large ones at the posts.
The league-wide results show how quickly the margin shrinks with distance. In 2025, NFL kickers made 98.1% from under 30 yards, 93.0% from 30 to 39, 84.3% from 40 to 49, 70.1% from 50 to 59, and 54.5% (12 of 22) from 60 and beyond. Even the best kickers in the world are working in a narrow window.
The public verdict
A kick is easy to count and easy to remember. A quarterback has dozens of plays to rebuild a drive; a kicker's best and worst moments each last about a second. It is natural for that to feel heavy.
It is worth knowing what the data says about that weight. For kicks in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime, with the kicker's team tied or trailing by up to three points, NFL kickers made 84 of 103 in 2024 and 2025, or 81.6%. Their distances predicted 79.8%. On average, high-stakes kicks did not go worse. That is a league-wide result from a small sample, and it says nothing about any one athlete's experience.
What a kicker can control
A kicker cannot control the wind, the snap, the score, or who is watching. A kicker can influence how they prepare, what they do between kicks, and how they talk about the result afterward. Three questions to bring to a coach:
- What do I do during the wait to stay ready without wearing myself out?
- What is my routine in the final ten seconds before I step in?
- How do we review a kick so I learn from it without replaying every miss?
If you read one more article, read The Kick After the Miss: What Recovery Really Requires on recovery after a miss.
Data: nflverse (CC BY 4.0), regular seasons 2024 and 2025; calculations by FKS.
Disclosure: FootballKickingStats.com is part of the A-Game network.
Sources
- Wikipedia, American football field (goalpost width and height)
- nflverse play-by-play, 2024 and 2025 regular seasons.
- Angles are geometry: arctan(9.25 ft / distance in feet).
- Late kicks: fourth quarter or overtime, 120 seconds or less left, kicking team tied or down one to three points.
- Expected makes come from a distance-only model fit by FKS (methods in Why Field-Goal Percentage Can Tell the Wrong Story).