With kickers becoming so efficient nowadays, kickoffs become more relevant in trying to distinguish between them. Most kickers are hitting 85-plus percent of their field goals. Probably 10-20 kickers will go over 90 percent. And there were only 5 missed extra points all of last year, one of which came in a snowstorm.
So we can look more at kickoffs. That’s a play that occurs about five times per game for teams, and it plays a role in field position. With cannon-legged guys, it’s tough to get outside the 20. You get a poor kickoff, and then you can see offenses starting out around the 35.
The chart below shows the teams that were the best at putting their kickoffs into the end zone. For teams tagged with a black dot (•), they made extensive use of a kickoff specialist. The other teams used their field goal kicker for kickoffs.
Carolina is way up there. It’s really No. 1 when you factor in that Matt Prater of Denver benefited from playing half of his games at altitude. So not surprising that the Panthers re-signed Graham Gano to a nice contract a few weeks back. Steven Hauschka has been outstanding on field goals and is a top-10 guy on kickoffs, so I was surprised some other team didn’t make a run at trying to sign him. He re-upped with Seattle.
Pittsburgh and Washington have the worst kickoff guys. That hurts with field position, and it’s also an indication those kickers are less likely to be successful on field goals of 50-plus yards.
| REACHING THE END ZONE ON KICKOFFS | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rk | Team | KO | EZ | Pct |
| 1. | Denver | 113 | 107 | 93.0% |
| 2. | Carolina | 81 | 76 | 92.7% |
| 3. | St. Louis | 77 | 74 | 91.4% |
| 4. | Jacksonville | 61 | 57 | 90.5% |
| 5. | Seattle | 92 | 83 | 88.3% |
| 6. | Miami | 74 | 64 | 85.3% |
| 7. | New England | 97 | 84 | 84.8% |
| 8. | • Detroit | 83 | 71 | 84.5% |
| 9. | • New Orleans | 84 | 73 | 83.9% |
| 10. | Kansas City | 91 | 77 | 83.7% |
| 11. | • Indianapolis | 85 | 73 | 83.0% |
| 12. | Minnesota | 85 | 73 | 83.0% |
| 13. | • Tampa Bay | 64 | 57 | 82.6% |
| 14. | Cleveland | 68 | 60 | 82.2% |
| 15. | Arizona | 85 | 71 | 81.6% |
| 16. | San Diego | 91 | 75 | 81.5% |
| 17. | • Atlanta | 72 | 64 | 81.0% |
| 18. | Houston | 67 | 55 | 80.9% |
| 19. | Baltimore | 80 | 66 | 80.5% |
| 20. | Dallas | 91 | 72 | 77.4% |
| 21. | Buffalo | 81 | 63 | 75.9% |
| 22. | Cincinnati | 84 | 65 | 75.6% |
| 23. | NY Giants | 68 | 53 | 74.6% |
| 24. | Tennessee | 77 | 61 | 73.5% |
| 25. | NY Jets | 70 | 52 | 71.2% |
| 26. | San Francisco | 90 | 65 | 70.7% |
| 27. | Philadelphia | 87 | 63 | 70.0% |
| 28. | • Green Bay | 89 | 63 | 67.7% |
| 29. | Oakland | 65 | 49 | 66.2% |
| 30. | Chicago | 84 | 59 | 65.6% |
| 31. | Washington | 68 | 40 | 55.6% |
| 32. | Pittsburgh | 82 | 45 | 52.3% |
—Ian Allan