Fromal's Kicking Notebook: Tyler Loop vindication, cowardly Cowboys and an emerging rookie standout

Week 3 of the 2026 NFL season brimmed over with kicker storylines, to the point that we can't possibly cover everything of intrigue without the word count rising far too high for anyone's liking. Allow me to give cursory mentions to Cam Little having enough leg to hit from 70, though he missed outside right by mere inches, Will Reichard draining deep kicks like it's his job (which, to be fair, it is), Andre Szmyt continuing to do nothing but succeed for the Cleveland Browns and Riley Patterson remaining just good enough that the 0-3, Devon Achane-less Dolphins will — wink wink, nudge nudge — definitely be devastated when he puts up some untimely misses that aid the growing pile of losses.

But those don't get as much ink because of all the more notable developments. Tyler Loop can breathe a sigh of relief after finally turning the page on his disastrous finish to 2025. The Dallas Cowboys inexplicably forgot they have one of the best kickers in the NFL at the worst possible time. Dominic Zvada keeps establishing himself as a crown jewel of this rookie class, and not in the way you might expect.

This is the first notebook since Week 1, but fear not. It'll make up for missed time.

The NFL kicking numbers that mattered in Week 3

Week 3 featured a whopping 67 field-goal attempts, and the kickers were on point. They made 59 of them (88.1 percent), and the average attempt came from 40.7 yards. Even though Brandon Aubrey, Trey Smack and Daniel Carlson (an extra point) had kicks blocked through no fault of their own, the league as a whole accumulated 6.02 KVA.

My proprietary kick value added (KVA) metric, which looks not just at a kicker's makes and misses but also at the distances from which they kicked and the overall league's level of success from each area during the season in question, helps us make sense of all the 2026 numbers. We're still early enough in the season that the league average against which all kicks are measured will change materially in the coming weeks, but that won't stop us from parsing through the numbers for insights.

First, the premier performers from Week 3:

On the flip side, the next five kickers came up on the bottom rungs of the weekly hierarchy:

It's worth noting that Smack's missed 47-yarder was hardly his fault. The Green Bay Packers completely failed to block an Atlanta Falcons rush that only featured 10 players, and his kick got swallowed up as it left his feet. That goes against him in the numbers, but it won't impact our subjective view of his rookie-year performance.

For the season as a whole, four kickers have begun to pull away from the pack, though plenty of time remains for big swings:

Conversely, struggles (with various degrees of sustainability) have plagued the bottom 10 on the season-long list:

Biggest NFL kicker takeaways from Week 3

As always, the raw numbers pale in importance to the kicks themselves. So let's dive into the storylines and observations.

Tyler Loop gets vindication in the best way for Baltimore Ravens

Euphoria. Jubilation. Elation.

Pick one of the three or find a synonym. The choice is yours. All applied to the scene that unfolded in Rio de Janeiro after Tyler Loop knocked a 56-yarder through the uprights at the buzzer to give the Baltimore Ravens an unexpected come-from-behind victory over the Dallas Cowboys, who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory (more on that later in the notebook).

The kick itself, pressure-laden as it may have been, wasn't worthy of the featured spot here. Will Reichard (56), Jason Myers (57), Drew Stevens (57), Eddy Pineiro (57) and Spencer Shrader (58) all hit from just as far during the NFL's Week 3 proceedings. Of that sextet, Loop's was the least accurate, starting left and hanging on to cross the threshold just inside the left upright.

But in that moment, as he raced across the field hitting the "Siuuu" celebration to the delight of the 72,792 fans roaring their approval, none of that mattered. The kick yielded three points. It won the game. And the fans weren't the only ones celebrating.

Aside from signing Jake Moody to the practice squad toward the end of the offseason, Baltimore spent the summer with Loop as the lone kicker of note. It refused to lose faith in the second-year option despite his rookie campaign ending in disaster: a missed 44-yarder against the rival Pittsburgh Steelers that turned a playoff berth into an early vacation. Even as Loop fomented doubt with practice-field misses and drew boos from the home crowd in the preseason finale after his third misfire of exhibition season, he remained the guy.

Watch the kick again. But don't watch for the kick; watch for the reaction of the rest of the Ravens. Naturally, you'd expect ecstasy after an epic sequence that led to an improbable game-winner, but Loop's teammates weren't just celebrating the W. They were championing him and his redemption arc. You can see it in Lamar Jackson racing down the field and seeking out Loop himself, in the rest of the team swarming him and in the postgame support he received after the biggest moment of his career.

This is a team that believed in its kicker, trials and tribulations be damned. And at a position that features so much tumult and treats mental resiliency as a prerequisite, that should go a long way in his continued NFL journey.

Dominic Zvada's rookie excellence goes beyond his field-goal attempts

The New York Giants' season is, uh, not going according to plan. After undergoing meniscus repair surgery, Jaxson Dart is out for the rest of the regular season (as if that John Harbaugh clarification is going to matter for a team that is most assuredly not playoff-bound). Brian Burns has gone under the season-ending knife. Somehow, J.J. McCarthy is on the roster.

But at least Dominic Zvada has been an unrelenting bright spot. He's made all six of his field-goal attempts from an average of 35.2 yards despite some inclement weather conditions. He's drilled all four of his extra-point attempts. Only Ryan Fitzgerald and Jake Bates (on a three-kick sample!) have graded out as more accurate in my kick-charting efforts — and that's after a perfect preseason in which he also displayed pristine aim on an even tougher, albeit less pressure-packed, set of kicks.

Zvada's point-producing prowess is already notable considering the uphill battle most rookie kickers face when adjusting to the professional ranks. However, his work in the kickoff game has stood out just as positively.

Through three weeks, Zvada has kicked off 12 times. Three have resulted in touchbacks, which bring the ball out to the 35-yard line, but the other nine have yielded an average return of just 24.8 yards and have featured boots that send the ball either right to the goal line or just short of it. As a result, Zvada has helped the Giants defense open drives with an average field position just 27.58 yards out of the end zone.

Relative to league-average numbers (with the important caveat that this metric caps returns at midfield to avoid overly penalizing the kicker for coverage foibles), Zvada has gained quite a bit of yardage for the Giants — 28.03 yards, to be exact. We're calling the metric Kickoff Yards Gained (KYG), and Zvada ranks within the top six of both the cumulative and per-kick versions.

The Giants' lackluster offense hasn't given Zvada as many kickoff opportunities as many of his positional compatriots, but only Andy Borregales (+3.46), Chase McLaughlin (+3.33), Brandon Aubrey (+3.13) and Ryan Fitzgerald (+2.39) are outdoing the rookie's 2.34 yards of field position gained per kick.

“It’s not simple. I don’t think anything that those guys go out there and do is simple,” Giants special teams coordinator Chris Horton said after Week 1, per Dan Benton of Giants Wire. "When we talk about the kickoffs, everything’s strategic, everything — where we want to play the ball.”

In Week 3, Zvada didn't deliver quite as much kickoff success as he did against the Dallas Cowboys in the season-opener, but he set his coverage unit up for success just by putting the ball in play and forcing a return. The game opened with a Giants fumble recovery, and it's worth noting that while this wasn't particularly good coverage by New York, Chimere Dike still only made it to the 35-yard line before coughing up the pigskin. That's the power of a deep dynamic kickoff that forces a return, and it's why more and more teams are going to change their tack throughout the season.

The Dallas Cowboys' inexplicable lack of confidence in Brandon Aubrey doomed them

Winning in the margins is crucial and preached constantly by every coaching staff that has ever set foot, however briefly, in an NFL building. Never does that feel more true than when a team somehow manages to blow a lead despite seemingly forcing overtime with just seven seconds left on the clock.

Yet the Dallas Cowboys did just that against the Baltimore Ravens, first giving up a 27-yard completion to Zay Flowers that took six seconds to complete and then watching helplessly as Tyler Loop's 56-yard kick soared through the air. But the play before Lamar Jackson uncorked a deep pass down the middle of the field was the truly inexplicable one. Superstar kicker Brandon Aubrey booted the ball through the end zone, giving the Ravens the ball on the 35-yard line with no time running off the clock. It was exactly what the Cowboys hadn't been doing.

“We felt like, let’s boom it through, put them out there, make them throw the ball short, and we’ll be fine,” head coach Brian Schottenheimer said, per The Associated Press. “Play for overtime. That’s what the plan was.”

Back in 2019, Jon Bois of Secret Base created the Surrender Index in his quest to determine the saddest punt in NFL history. It's an incredible piece of content that holds up seven years later. Unfortunately, we have no such Surrender Index for kickoffs. If we did, this Dallas decision would be among the leading candidates to top the charts.

Maybe the decision was influenced by Aubrey kicking the ball out of bounds twice already, but that would be 1) mathematically incorrect and 2) a gross misunderstanding of what had already transpired. The chances of Dallas playing conservative coverage and giving up a fluky touchdown on the return are infinitesimally small, and Aubrey had put together a technically brilliant, unlucky and still-successful body of work through the first 3.993 quarters.

To open the game, Aubrey drove a perfect line drive into the left corner, compelling LaJohntay Wester into an attempted return that went to the Baltimore 23 (and Wester got obliterated). Seven minutes later, he attempted a similar kick that Wester muffed on the 7-yard line and recovered at the Baltimore 21.

Four minutes after that, Aubrey hit a shorter line drive that landed on the 13 and, despite heading for a relatively safe portion of the end zone, took an unlucky hop and went out of bounds a foot shy of the pylon. The idea on this kick, which is going to gain popularity as kickers keep practicing it, forces the opponent to attempt a tricky catch and delayed return or take a bounced-in touchback that would be placed at the 20 rather than the 35. The biggest risk is what happened to Aubrey: an out-of-bounds kick giving the Ravens the ball at the Baltimore 40.

In the third quarter, Aubrey landed a line drive on the 19, and Rasheen Ali could only get the return to the Baltimore 24. He put one in the end zone for a touchback later in the period and then mis-angled a fourth-quarter line drive out of bounds. Over six kickoffs, two of which went out of bounds (and one of which was unlucky), Aubrey had spotted the Ravens, on average, 30.5 yards outside the end zone. Notably, that's better than 35!

The same story has rung true all year. Aubrey has employed an aggressive, higher-risk kickoff approach throughout the early portion of Dallas' schedule, except it hasn't actually been that risky. Even with a league-high three penalized kickoffs, he's generated average field position 26.79 yards in — better than everyone but Chase McLaughlin (26.59) and Andy Borregales (26.45). Put simply: He's been one of the league's deadliest kickoff weapons even with the penalized kicks.

Dallas' decision couldn't have been more cowardly.

More kicker takeaways from Week 3

Spencer Shrader looks unbelievable right now: Maybe he's in midseason form because he spent the offseason in a highly competitive battle with Blake Grupe. Spencer Shrader has submitted incredible basic stats, advanced stats and eye-test confirmations. Though he did push an extra point just outside right against the Ravens in Week 1, he's made all eight field-goal attempts from a league-high 46.8 yards on average, including 37, 39, 53 and 58 against the Texans in Week 3. That's good for a silver-podium spot on the KVA leaderboard, and he's paired it with elite accuracy metrics in my kick charting. Plus, he's just booming the ball through the middle-center of the uprights on attempts from all distances.

Eddy Pineiro can't help Eddy Pineiroing: Last season, Eddy Pineiro finished fourth in KVA despite missing a league-high five extra points in a continuation of a career-long trend. In Week 3, the San Francisco specialist made a 57-yarder to close the first half but yanked a PAT outside left and then doinked the next one. Only Tom Dempsey, Joey Slye and Bob Thomas have worse career PAT KVA.

The Evan McPherson heater continues: The Bengals shouldn't hesitate to let Evan McPherson trot out onto the field right now because he's on quite the hot streak. After hitting from 38 and 50 with three PATs, he's earned 12.73 KVA in his last eight games without a single negative performance. The Week 4 matchup between him and Cam Little is going to feature some impressive kicking.

The Patriots have to be getting close to bringing in competition: After Andy Borregales missed from 49, 55 (a putrid attempt) and 56 in the preseason, he's continued his erraticism in games that count. The second-year kicker pushed a 47-yarder in Week 2 and then badly missed a 38-yarder in a blowout loss to the Jaguars. Good as he's been on kickoffs, the Pats have to be putting a few names on speed dial because he's also been one of the five least-accurate options in my charting.

Joey Slye missed left: Check outside your window for flying pigs. Joey Slye missed six kicks in 2025, and every single one was outside right. His 59-yard misfire that slid just outside the left upright against the Giants was his first miss left (including this preseason) since he yanked a 53-yard field goal wide left for the Patriots in Week 15 of the 2024 season.

NFL doink counter after Week 3

1. Eddy Pineiro (2): Some doinks feature a ball gracefully drawing through the air, directly into the goalposts. Some drift further and further off-center until hitting the upright opposite the starting hash. And some, like Eddy Pineiro's second Week 3 PAT gone wrong, rocket directly at the same-side upright. We have our first multi-entrant!

2(tie). Cameron Dicker (1): The worry about Cameron Dicker's performance began in earnest after the third exhibition week, and it's only growing. He doinked a 58-yarder low off the right upright in Week 2 (a high-inside snap didn't really throw off the timing or create undue pressure), and he followed that up with a miss in Week 3 that hooked left.

2(tie). Wil Lutz (1): Denver was a little rainy, but that's not enough of an excuse for Wil Lutz, who joined Pineiro in the same-side rocket club. He's otherwise been fantastic in tough weather conditions, successfully navigating strong crosswinds in his first two outings, and he at least made his two PATs against the Rams.

2(tie). Chad Ryland (1): His 54-yard attempt clanged off the right upright in Week 1.

NFL Kick of the Week: Spencer Shrader fights through injury for the game-winner

This kick checked all the boxes. Lengthy? Maybe not by current standards, but let's not get in the habit of turning our noses up at 53-yarders. Clutch? Well, it turned a Colts loss into a Colts victory with 16 seconds remaining. Aesthetically pleasing? It arced high and straight before crossing the threshold just off-center right. Good narrative? Shrader had dealt with groin tightness earlier in the game.

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