Ian Allan looks at the career flow of kickers of the last 20 years and concludes that players at this position tend to get better with age. Younger kickers are more likely to struggle with accuracy.
Kicker is a position where experience counts. It tends to take them a few seasons to iron out the routine and develop the right mentality, and their best ball often comes well into their career.
And I’ve got the numbers to back up that claim.
In the last 20 years, 52 kickers have lasted at least five years in the league. I took that group of kickers (ignoring guys like Scott Sisson who quickly fell out of the league). Then I combined those players’ stats by year – how they collectively did in the first year, their second year, and so on.
So for each age, I’ve got at least 52 kickers. Once we start getting into the 6th year, we start losing a few kickers each year.
In only three of the 18 years in the study did the kickers, on average, convert fewer than 80 percent of their field goals, and three of those were in their first three years.
All seven of the most accurate seasons, on the other hand, occurred after the eighth year. The best seasons of all occurred in seasons 18, 16 and 12.
This is a position where it’s more mental than physical. It’s like golf. So when you’re sending a guy out to convert a high-pressure 45-yarder, you want somebody who’s been around for a while – who is very much aware of what it’s like to convert such a kick with 70,000 people screaming.
It’s a concept to keep in mind when considering inexperienced kickers like Dustin Hopkins and Caleb Sturgis (who were both drafted last year). Those guys might both have long, productive careers – and they might even be good in 2014 – but trends suggest their best years are more likely to come 10 years down the road.
| KICKERS: ACCURACY BY SEASON | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | FG | FGA | Pct |
| 1 | 295 | 392 | .753 |
| 2 | 347 | 447 | .776 |
| 3 | 402 | 506 | .794 |
| 4 | 357 | 441 | .810 |
| 5 | 402 | 491 | .819 |
| 6 | 424 | 515 | .823 |
| 7 | 420 | 507 | .828 |
| 8 | 307 | 396 | .775 |
| 9 | 418 | 496 | .843 |
| 10 | 396 | 476 | .832 |
| 11 | 373 | 453 | .823 |
| 12 | 405 | 474 | .854 |
| 13 | 275 | 327 | .841 |
| 14 | 204 | 241 | .846 |
| 15 | 158 | 193 | .819 |
| 16 | 77 | 90 | .856 |
| 17 | 38 | 52 | .731 |
| 18 | 35 | 40 | .875 |
--Ian Allan