Kicking Up A Fuss
by Brian Davis
6/2/2010
We covered kicking in Four Downs #102 and in digging around for stats, I uncovered a site which lets me report them much more easilly and in a different light other than just chucking percentages down over and over again.
So I thought I’d carry on where I left off on the subject of accuracy and whether 2009 really was all that bad, and how it matched up with previous years, the results were pretty interesting if you like that kind of thing!
So here it is, in graph format to see the peaks and troughs of kicking in the last 10 years.
The main reason the kicking was highlighted so much in 2009 was the amount of crucial kicks missed at game changing times, statistically, the overall percentage of Field Goals dropped over 3% which you can see in the graph below which IS a significant drop, but it’s nowhere near as bad as we’ve seen in previous years, we’re merely back to the standard we were seeing in 2006 at a shade over 81%
Another reason for the seemingly lack of good kicking this year, is because 2008 was so special. 2008 saw peaks in recent years in Field Goals from 20-29 Yards (98.1%), 40-49 Yards (74.5%) and a staggering leap in successful conversions of Field Goals over 50 Yards with 63.4% of kicks made, which when you look at previous seasons 2005 was 52%, 2006 was 47%, 2007 was 47% and 2009 at 52.8% is a phenomenal leap in terms of averages. There were the same amount of kicks from 50 yards plus, attempted in 2008 as there were in 2009 (104).
Kicks from 30-39 yards in 2009 were on a real downward turn, only 83.6% were converted, against 2008's 89.1% and 2007's 90.6%.
Under 20 yards are automatic, (4 kicks since 2000 have been missed at under 20 yards, none of which were in the last 7 seasons), but the fall in numbers would suggest a lot of teams are now trying more 4th Down conversions at 4th and Goal from the 1 or 2, than Field Goals. In 2000 there were 31 attempts at kicks under 20 yards compared with 7 in 2008 and 11 in 2009.
Kicks from 20-29 Yards saw a record high in 2008 of over 98% of kicks made successfully, 2009 was its nearest rival with 96.70% of kicks made from that distance, there have been no real trends to kicking from this distance as shown in the graph below, but other than 2008’s record year, we’ve been steadily in between 95-96% of kicks made from this distance between 2003 to date.
30-39 Yards saw a big drop off in 2009, after a peak in 2007 of 90.68% we saw a slight decline in 2008’s strong year to 89.10% but then a rapid descent down to a mere 83% in 2009, the lowest success rate at this distance since 2004’s lowest year of a poor 81.47%.
In 2001 the kicking between 40-49 Yards was at a real low point with only 59% of kicks going over, but since 2003 we’ve seen some consistent kicking which again peaked in 2008’s great year for Kickers with a slight 1.5% drop off in 2009.
In the last 4 years we’ve had both the worst and the best of kicking from 50 yards and over. 2006 was the worst we have seen with not even half of the kicks attempted being successful, yet in 2008 (again) we saw a massive 63.46% of kicks made successfully, unsurprisingly, we saw a drop off again in 2009 as we levelled out to the 10 year average from this distance.
2009 Notable performances:
Good:
Nate Kaeding had a 91.40% success rate before his playoff meltdown.
Ryan Longwell hit a 92.90% success rate, you’d have to fancy his chances of sticking one over with the game on the line from near 50 if you call the right plays or don’t have 12 men in your huddle!
Olindo Mare, after getting called out by Jim Mora Jr for missing 2 kicks in one game, then went on to nail every one of his attempts thereafter hitting 26 of 24 with a 92.30% accuracy.
Neil Rackers, another playoff kicker suffering heartache only missed one all season, back in week 2, a 48 yarder in Jacksonville, hitting 16 of 17 with 94.10%
On the bad side:
Houston’s Kris Brown only made 21 from his 32 attempts, hitting 65.60%
Nick Folk, before getting cut, made only 18 of 28 (64.30%), less than a year removed from a Pro Bowl appearance.
Atlanta’s Jason Elam also had a down year with only 12 kicks made from a possible 19, 63.20%
Of the 20 Extra Points missed in 2009, David Akers had 2 of his 45 blocked and John Carney 2 of his 50
Oddity:
Kaeding Longwell, Rackers all had XP’s missed, despite being 3 of the best FG kickers in terms of percentages.
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