If 2013 had had its way, the 2022 NFL Divisional Round weekend would have looked very different. The Bengals might not still be inverting history. Aaron Rodgers might have finally beaten his boyhood team. Tom Brady would have probably Tom Brady’d. And one of the greatest playoff games in history would have ended with 13 seconds to go, writes Megan Feringa for our NFL newsletter End Zone.
Because in 2013, the verdict was out. Kickers were bootless. ESPN’s Skip Bayless went as far as decrying a need for the NFL to do away with those “gimmicky” bits of football squads. And in the Divisional Round weekend of Super Bowl LVI, it was those gimmicky kicking fiends who nailed their opponents into their post-season coffins.
Four games decided by a combined 15 points, all won on final plays thanks to a kicker: the Rams by a 30-yarder from Matt Gay, the 49ers on a 45-yarder from Robbie Gould and the Bengals with a 52-yarder (!) courtesy of rookie Evan McPherson.
Even Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs owe a tip of the hat to placekicker Harrison Butker, whose game-tying field goal with 13 seconds of regulation pulled the game back from its ostensible noose.
Kickers have never been football’s sexy player until they are. They are the little guys, the ones who cannot catch or throw, kicking the ball between the big yellow tuning forks, remembered only when they miss tragically or win extraordinarily.
The life of an NFL kicker is a pressure vacuum of fascination, fury and incessant suspicion. Since the 1980s, kicking accuracy has grown from 70 percent to near 85 percent, but the success has grown into an onus. NFL fans are constantly on the hunt for that “big leg”, a kicker who can knock it 50-plus yards like *snaps* that. When kickers nail one down, they are fulfilling obligations. When they don’t, they are synonymous with unnecessary, and unforgivable, dropped points.
Such a volatile world means the argument to scrap kickers completely is not new. Bayless dredged up the conversation in 2013. In 2016, the familiar noise gathered strength as kickers failed to uphold their side of the bargain.
In Week 5 of this very season, kickers rang in the worst weekend of their position in the past 34 years when kickers missed 14 field goals and 13 extra points, the worst combined misses since Week 11 of the 1987 season. Cue noise.
Gay was one of those Week 5 disappointments (a missed extra point) as was McPherson (a missed 57-yarder). Their displays over the weekend, then, can risk seeming like absolutions for their past sins.
Yet, in the regular season, Gay converted 144 of a possible 151 points, missing only two field goal attempts and one extra point attempt. In the postseason, he is five for six on field goals, having missed an attempt against the Bucs but finding pardon in the game-winner.
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McPherson finished the season after making 46 of 48 PAT attempts and 28 of 33 shots from the field. McPherson has made 9 of 11 attempts from over 50 yards, the most among all NFL kickers in 2021.
Meanwhile, Robbie Gould who came in clutch for the Niners is 20-for-20 in his career in the postseason. No kicker in NFL history has as many playoff field goals without a miss as Gould.
McPherson in particular plays a special role in the weekend’s kicker narrative. The 22-year-old was the only kicker drafted in the 2021 draft, a decision based on the fact that of the 15 kickers drafted between 2013 and 2020, 13 lasted two or fewer seasons with the team that drafted them.
Yet, in the seconds just before he nailed the 57-yard attempt, McPherson glanced at his bench, grinned and said “Looks like we’re going to the AFC Championship.”
Such a psyche from a seldom-used specialist in a high-pressure situation is praiseworthy. Such a psyche oozing from a rookie kicker 52 yards out is quite literally extraordinary.
“It’s a striker’s dream to have the game on your shoulders,” McPherson said. “This is my job. This is what I do for the Bengals. It’s my job to stay cool, calm and collected in moments like those.”
The temptation arises to forget that kickers, as much as any worker, can have a blip of a workday. An extra point shanks wide. A rather rudimentary field goal attempt falls short. Their blips, however, can feel sharper. Bucs punter Bradley Pinion forced two kick-off penalties on his side as both attempts sailed out of bounds while placekicker Ryan Succop missed a 48-yard field goal attempt. Fingers will naturally point in their direction when considering the Bucs’ (many) self-inflicted wounds.
In many ways, kickers are the goalkeepers of American football - seemingly separate from the rest, anonymous only until they are the most important player on the pitch. That pressure can be paralysing.
Still, on a weekend when that paralysing pressure was exacerbated, the kickers came in clutch. If you listen closely, you can hear 2013 frantically attempting to erase itself.
