The preseason's opening week was full of intriguing kicker action, and you'll find plenty of insight here. In my quest to bring the level of analysis for the position up to a higher standard, I've already ranked every 2026 NFL kicker, highlighted the numbers you need to know, and broken down the NCAA kickers who have the best chance to join the professional fraternity. Now, it's time for a weekly notebook that highlights key stats and developments to provide findings that can only come from watching, studying and charting literally every kick.
It's not breaking news that Cam Little hit from 54 yards without breaking a sweat or that Will Reichard enjoyed a perfect day for the Minnesota Vikings. We're going to have patience with Tyler Loop, even though he's bookended an incredible camp with a playoff-eliminating miss and a preseason-opening misfire. And no one should be particularly concerned about Cameron Dicker's concentration lapse following a touchdown.
So let's get to what really mattered: Trey Smack silenced the skeptics, Andy Borregales allowed doubt to creep into the equation for the New England Patriots and much more.
The NFL kicking numbers that mattered this week
To begin, we'll take a look at some overall numbers, leaning upon my proprietary kick value added (KVA) metric that 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.
The NFL as a whole went 56-of-70 (80 percent) on field-goal attempts and 57-of-58 (come on, Cameron Dicker!) on extra-point tries during the opening slate of the 2026 exhibition season. Based on last year's standard, that resulted in -1.06 KVA, though the negative score shouldn't be too surprising given preseason form and camp battles leading to more attempts from less-proven players. The individual leaders?
Kicker | KVA | FGs | XPs | Avg Make |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Joey Slye | 3.25 | 4-of-4 | 1-of-1 | 51.3 |
Spencer Shrader | 1.74 | 2-of-2 | 0-of-0 | 53.5 |
Trey Smack | 1.72 | 3-of-3 | 0-of-0 | 44.0 |
Evan McPherson | 1.70 | 3-of-3 | 1-of-1 | 43.3 |
Harrison Butker | 1.69 | 4-of-4 | 0-of-0 | 39.3 |
And the bottom of the barrel?
Kicker | KVA | FGs | XPs | Avg Attempt |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Andy Borregales | -5.15 | 2-of-5 | 1-of-1 | 50.0 |
Kansei Matsuzawa | -2.62 | 0-of-1 | 0-of-0 | 38.0 |
Jason Myers | -2.35 | 0-of-1 | 1-of-1 | 45.0 |
Charlie Smyth | -2.09 | 0-of-1 | 2-of-2 | 52.0 |
Blake Grupe | -1.85 | 0-of-1 | 1-of-1 | 61.0 |
Chris Freeman | -1.85 | 0-of-1 | 1-of-1 | 61.0 |
What we learned about NFL kickers in preseason Week 1
Because the numbers only tell part of the story — it's the kicks themselves that really matter — here are some of the bigger kicker storylines this week.
Trey Smack did everything he could to silence the skeptics
Few rookies entered Week 1 of the 2026 preseason facing as much pressure as Trey Smack, who has been subjected to ceaseless scrutiny ever since he started recording practice-field reps for the Green Bay Packers. That's what happens when a marquee organization expected to be competitive trades up to use a sixth-round pick on a kicker, especially on the heels of Brandon McManus' miserable performance.
Of course, Smack didn't make it easy on himself. He struggled in OTAs, which made it all the more surprising that Green Bay cut Lucas Havrisik and only engaged in a brief dalliance with Lenny Krieg as a Smack challenger. Then he finished the pre-preseason portion of training camp with eight misses on live reps, even deleting social media to reduce the cascading crescendo of negative noise.
Smack needed just one preseason game to put those concerns to bed. And that's what he did. The Florida product attempted his first three-pointer in the first quarter, setting up for a 58-yarder from the right hash and drilling it through the center of the uprights with plenty of room to spare. The Pittsburgh Steelers committed a personal foul that gave Green Bay a new set of downs, so it didn't technically count, though it did immediately quell the concerns of Packers fans watching the live broadcast. He wasn't done there.
Smack finished that extended drive with a 37-yard conversion that barely missed the horizontal center of the uprights, he hit from 58 yards on a kick that actually counted just before halftime, and he finished his night with a 37-yard field goal that didn't draw back to the center quite enough but still went through the uprights cleanly.
"I don't really try to feel relief in this kind of business because we always have next week," Smack said after the game, per the Packers. "We gotta play next week. My mind's already switched to the Broncos." Packers fans' minds have likely shifted to other roster concerns.
Andy Borregales' struggles should prompt concern but not discouragement
New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel didn't exactly rely on ambiguity after Andy Borregales' dreadful preseason showing, though he couldn't avoid some mixed messaging in the process.
"Well, I'm sure we'll talk about it and see where we're at," Vrabel explained, per Patriots Wire, refusing to rule out the possibility of bringing in another kicker as offseason competition. "I'm not going to make any decision tonight."
He also corrected a reporter who undersold the number of Borregales misses (not a "couple of kicks"), expressed his continued confidence in the Miami product, and credited the Colts making from 60-plus to having multiple kickers on the roster.
Especially based on that last comment, Borregales shouldn't be surprised if New England follows through and works out a veteran kicker in the coming days. This was an ugly performance.
He shanked a 55-yarder that, based on my kick charting, was the worst live-action kick of his career. And while he successfully converted — straight down the middle, no less — from 38 and 52, he also misfired on a 56-yard attempt that hooked left and barely had sufficient distance before missing a potential game-winning 49-yarder that also erred left and gave the impression that he was swinging far too hard.
If you're a Patriots fan looking to maintain some belief in Borregales making a second-year jump, take solace in the fact that he was actually trying something novel against the Colts.
Borregales exclusively attempted long kicks from one side during his rookie season, as you can see from the above chart of his attempt distances and the estimated proximity to the horizontal center of the uprights on each kick from 2025. All six of his tries from 46-plus, two of which missed, came after he lined up on the right hash.
Against the Colts, each of the three long misses came from the left hash. Moreover, all three hooked left, which stands in stark contrast to the miss pattern established last year. While the kicker himself claimed he wasn't trying anything different, this offers up the possibility that Borregales is making subtle mechanical tweaks that will pay off down the road — or, at the very least, getting accustomed to a slightly different aim point and desired trajectory from uncharted attempt territory.
Patriots fans should be concerned but not overly discouraged right now.
Joey Slye broke a remarkable trend from 2025
The Tennessee Titans brought in Joshua Karty for a workout, but Joey Slye put any doubts about his job status to bed with a sterling showing against the San Francisco 49ers — an out-of-bounds kickoff notwithstanding. (And for the record, Karty graded out, based on the estimated horizontal distance from the center of the uprights on every field-goal attempt, as the least-accurate kicker in 2025 among the 37 with double-digit attempts.)
Not only did Slye successfully convert an extra point and all four field-goal attempts, but those attempts weren't exactly easy ones. He made from 39, 53, 55, and 58, and the two longest kicks were both put right down the center of the uprights without any impression of Slye needing to exert max effort. But the 39-yarder was my favorite of the night because it showed the 30-year-old breaking a remarkable trend from the 2025 season.
Last year, each of Slye's six non-blocked misses leaked out to the right, and the same was true of many makes. In fact, of the 35 attempts that cleanly travelled past the line of scrimmage, only four (11.4 percent) crossed the threshold more than an estimated foot left of the horizontal center. Conversely, 17 (48.6 percent) missed at least an estimated foot right.
Whether a conscious effort or not, Slye making a 39-yarder that came closer to the left upright than the center is an indication that he's changing either his technique or his aim point for the better.
The Kick of the Week belongs to Colts' Spencer Shrader
61 yards for Spencer 🙌
— Indianapolis Colts (@Colts) August 14, 2026
📺 #INDvsNE | 8/13 on FOX59 pic.twitter.com/cTdP8twAaB
Even if this 61-yarder drifted slightly to the right for Spencer Shrader, it was the lone make of the opening preseason slate that came from beyond 60 yards. The Colts kicker succeeded where three others failed — Blake Grupe (competing directly against him in Indianapolis' positional battle), Chris Freeman (giving Ka'imi Fairbairn a brief respite but already cut by the Houston Texans), and Eddy Pineiro (left it short for the San Francisco 49ers but so far from any sort of danger zone).
Shrader isn't typically viewed as a power kicker. Before tearing his ACL and MCL last year, he went 13-of-14 with an average make of 35.1 yards and a long of just 52. In 2024, his five makes for the Kansas City Chiefs and New York Jets averaged 33.4 yards, and none came from beyond 45. Even his collegiate long was a 54-yarder for Notre Dame during the 2023 season.
This is newfound territory for Shrader, and we love to see it.
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