Should the field goal rules be changed in the NFL?

Something that’s been getting a lot of attention is the massive increase in really long field goals in the NFL in recent years. I went and looked up the stats over the last 60 years, and they’re pretty wild.

First, in terms of what percentage of total field goal attempts were successful per year:

1964: 53.1%. Two full time field goal kicker made less than a third of their attempts, including the legendary Golden Boy Paul Hornung, who was an amazing 12 for 38 for the Packers. I wouldn’t want to bet there was a better option for Green Bay (dyswidt?), but Vince Lombardi did give Willie Wood a chance to attempt a FG (he missed, but he was 1 for 1 on extra points).

1974: 60.6% By this point the “soccer style” kickers were beginning to show up in force, although it would take another 20 years for them to drive the last toe kicker into retirement (they dun took our jerbs!).

1984: 71.7%

1994: 78.9%

2004: 80.8%

2014: 84%

2024: 84%

2025 is 85.4% so far, but with a bunch of bad weather games over the next month I would imagine that might decline a bit.

But that’s really just a very partial look at the picture. While the percentage of field goals made hasn’t gone up that much over the past 30 years, the really huge change is in the amount of long distance kicking.

First, the number of 50 yard plus FG made compared to the number of attempts:

1964: 3-29

1974: 4-30

1984: 37-89 (41%)

1994: 24-66 (36%). I believe that the rules changed between 1984 and 1994 to put the ball after a missed FG at the line of scrimmage from which it was attempted, instead of the 20, which would explain the sharp decline in long attempts.

2004: 54-93 (58%)

2014: 94-154 (59%)

2024: 195-279 (70%)

By 2024 FG kickers were as successful on 50+ yard attempts as they had been on ALL attempts just 40 years earlier!

In fact we’ve now seen if not the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, that of the 60+ yard FG kicker.

My little survey doesn’t include a single 60+ yard FG attempt in 1964. 1974, 1984, and 1994. Kickers went 0-3 on such attempts in 2004, and 0-5 in 2014.

They were 4-15 in 2024, after going 5-9 the year before that, but this year the revolution is being televised to the amazing stat of NFL kickers making 9-17 60-yard attempts so far. (This may reflect new rules that allow kickers to nurse and fondle their balls for the entire week before a game, as opposed to formerly when they could so so for only an hour before kickoff).

The situation has gotten so extreme that somebody like Cameron Dicker (born in Hong Kong and raised in Shanghai oddly enough) has made 100 of his 102 field goal attempts in his NFL career that have come from less than 50 yards out.

This reflects how the gradual plateauing of the total percentage of kicks made over the past 20-30 years doesn’t reflect that those kicks are being attempted, on average, from much further away than in previous generations, to the point where if a team gets inside the 35 yard line it now has an almost automatic three points if it doesn’t turn the ball over.

It’s a really big change in the basic structure of the game, and I bet the powers that be are considering some drastic shifts in the rules to deal with it (the rules were tweaked a lot between the 1970s and the 2000s, with first the goal posts being moved ten yards back, then the ball going back to the line of scrimmage after a miss, then going back again to the spot of the kick). Possible changes include:

Making the goal posts narrower

Changing the value of a field goal to two points

Loosing up the rules on what the defense can do when trying to block kicks (for instance some years ago the NFL started enforcing a rule that you couldn’t leverage yourself at all off another player when leaping to try to block a kick).

Anyway the stats are certainly interesting, at least to me, so feel free to discuss both the specific issue of possible reform, and any related topics, with related topics in this case being anything at all, given the esoteric nature of the subject.