The 10 numbers that will define NFL kicking in 2026

NFL kickers are evolving. So, too, is our analysis of the position.

The 2025 season was filled with better performances than ever from one of the league's most overlooked groups, and 2026 is primed to feature more broken records and previously unseen levels of success. From Cam Little's long-distance heroics to Chris Boswell's climb up the career leaderboard, we're breaking down the 10 kicking numbers you need to know.

This article refers to kick value added (KVA), FanSided's in-house, proprietary metric designed to measure the actual value of kickers. KVA looks not just at a kicker's makes and misses, but at the distances from which they kicked and the overall league's level of success from each area during the season in question. You can read more about the methodology here.

The numbers changing the job of an NFL kicker

40.47-yard average attempt

Nothing better displays the changing nature of NFL kicking than the 40.47 yards that served as the league-average attempt distance during the 2025 regular season and postseason. The number has never been higher and has risen a substantial 2.74 yards in just the last decade.

At face value, that might not seem too significant. But factor in the volume, and the change feels monumental. NFL kickers took 1,139 field-goal attempts during the 2025 campaign and 1,048 a decade prior. That's a raw increase of about 19,663 feet's worth of kicks (3.7 miles) over the last 10 years.

And that's just the last decade.

The trend is unmistakable, but the subtler shift shown by the data is just as meaningful. The gap between average attempt and average make has converged over the years, morphing from a 5.5-yard chasm in 1965 to just 1.38 this past season.

Kickers aren't just taking field-goal attempts from lengthier distances; they're also making them from far longer ranges. And that strongly suggests that 40.47 isn't going to stand as a league record for even another calendar year.

12 makes from 60-plus

Throughout NFL history, 53 kicks have sailed through the uprights from 60-plus yards. Tom Dempsey used his block-toed right boot to get the party started in 1970 with a record-setting 63-yarder for the New Orleans Saints, but he remained alone in Club 60 until Steve Cox (60 yards in 1984), Morten Andersen (60 yards in 1991), and Jason Elam (63 yards in 1998) earned their memberships.

That was it until 2006, when Matt Bryant and Rob Bironas became the first pair to achieve the feat in the same season. In 2012, David Akers (record-tying 63-yarder), Jay Feely, and Greg Zuerlein set a new standard with three combined makes in a season. The record then stood for nine years until Justin Tucker set the new distance mark (66 yards) and was joined by Matt Prater, Ka'imi Fairbairn, and Brandon McManus in 2021's Club 60.

Five different kickers hit from 60-plus in both 2022 and 2023. In 2024, Brandon Aubrey joined Brett Maher as the second player to hit two 60-yarders in a single season.

The real explosion happened in 2025.

NFL kickers combined for 12 makes from 60-plus, shattering the previous record and rewriting other portions of the history books in the process. Aubrey became the first to record three such kicks. Blake Grupe, Chase McLaughlin, Chris Boswell, Daniel Carlson, Evan McPherson, Lucas Havrisik, and Will Reichard each joined the party — and it's telling that the position has evolved so much that Carlson and Havrisik aren't even on training camp rosters in the subsequent season.

Plus, some guy named Cam Little made two of his own for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

70-yard possibilities

Cam Little cleared the previous all-time record for longest made field goal twice during the 2025 campaign, first hitting from 68 yards against the Las Vegas Raiders and then following it up with a 67-yard bomb that hooked straight through the center of the uprights against the Tennessee Titans. Both, shocking as this may seem, cleared the crossbar with so much room to spare that they likely would've been good from at least 70 yards.

Yet those aren't even the longest field goals Little has drilled; they're just the longest that came during an official NFL game that counts toward the record books.

On Aug. 9, 2025, Little stepped onto the field for a 70-yard preseason try against the Pittsburgh Steelers and pured it through the uprights. It didn't have quite the same margin for error, but even that kick had a low enough trajectory and enough crossbar clearance to convince viewers that he could've made it from a few strides further back.

A 70-yard kick can happen. It will happen soon enough, and Little isn't the only candidate to achieve what was previously unfathomable. Incoming New York Giants rookie Dominic Zvada, admittedly under far more favorable conditions (using a holder stand and without defenders in his face), has hit from 70 during offseason practices. Other big-legged kickers aren't far behind.

The numbers changing the NFL kicker market

$28 million contracts

Where improvement comes, dollars follow. The role of a kicker is only going to grow in importance as the level of play rises, and teams are already proving willing to pony up for the top performers.

After protracted negotiations, the Cowboys handed Brandon Aubrey a four-year deal worth $28 million ($20 million guaranteed) to reset the positional market and reward the excellence that has him atop our 2026 rankings. Shortly thereafter, the Pittsburgh Steelers followed suit, matching that deal for franchise mainstay Chris Boswell.

As is so often the case with positional resets, the cash won't stop flowing there.

Will Reichard is due for an extension next offseason, and the Minnesota Vikings should be rooting for him to leave no doubt about his case. He's already earned 17.84 KVA (our proprietary metric for kicking value first introduced and explained here) through his first two professional seasons, cementing himself as one of the league's elites and imbuing a franchise that has experienced no shortage of kicking woes with a previously unheard-of level of confidence. Chase McLaughlin could also force the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' hand, especially if he stabilizes from 40-49 yards and bounces back from a 2025 season that featured too many blocked attempts.

Pick No. 216

Interestingly, NFL teams' willingness to spend draft capital — even picks at the tail end of the annual prospect pageant — hasn't risen at a rate commensurate to the position's value. The 2026 class featured just one kicker: Trey Smack, who joined the Green Bay Packers at No. 216 after they traded a pair of seventh-rounders to move up into the sixth.

Is that due to a dearth of talent? Not at all. NCAA kickers are better than ever, and there's no shortage of incoming talent even if said talent is largely taking the UDFA route to land on rosters. If anything, the wealth of available young options may actually have an adverse effect on their draft chances.

That puts even more pressure on Smack as he looks to justify the Packers' resource expenditure. Green Bay moved on from Brandon McManus after a tough year (he finished dead last in our 2025 KVA rankings) and waived Lucas Havrisik, 61-yarder last year be damned, to set Smack up for a training camp and preseason as the unquestioned man atop the depth chart.

The Florida product, as seen in the screenshot above, enjoyed plenty of consistent success from all ranges for the Gators. He needs to keep himself from opening up his hips too early as he looks to develop more consistency from the right hash, but he has easy power and elevation that should translate to the professional level.

Immediate success would be great news for the many collegiate kickers trying to follow in his cleatsteps.

8 rookie kickers

Smack is the lone drafted kicker, but he's not alone in the rookie class. Though Lenny Krieg enjoyed a mere cup of coffee in Green Bay, eight kickers entered or later joined training camp either in battles that won't be resolved until preseason action is well underway or in positions to audition for other squads.

Tanner Brown will be trying to displace Charlie Smyth for the New Orleans Saints' job, and he'll have a great chance to do exactly that if his UFL success translates. The league's reigning Special Teams Player of the Year made 10 kicks from 50-59 yards and three from 60-plus.

Dominic Zvada is coming off a down year at Michigan that likely prevented him from joining Smack in the drafted category, but he has an absolute howitzer of a right leg that should excite the New York Giants as he battles Ben Sauls for the gig. Drew Stevens didn't enjoy the same spotlight at Iowa. However, his average made field goal came from 39.4 yards last year, and his experience in adverse weather conditions could give him the proverbial leg up on Jake Moody to helm the Washington Commanders' depth chart.

Kansei Matsuzawa finished third in NCAA KVA last year and is now the first Japanese-born player signed by an NFL team. He fell in love with the sport after attending a Raiders game at 19 years old and taught himself to kick by watching YouTube videos. Now, he has a legitimate chance to beat out Matt Gay and become the starter for, of all teams, Las Vegas.

B.T. Potter isn't going to win the Tampa Bay job. The same is true of Laith Marjan in Pittsburgh and Chris Freeman in Houston. But they're still forming relationships with those franchises and auditioning for the other roles that will inevitably open up in the near future.

The numbers showing the many forms of NFL kicker value

42 years old

Rewind to 2017, and Nick Folk was a 33-year-old coming off a four-game stretch with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in which he'd made just six of his 11 field-goal attempts before landing on injured reserve. His NFL career seemed, if not over, as if it were in the denouement.

But after Folk spent 2018 out of the league, even kicking for the Arizona Hotshots of the now-defunct Alliance of American Football, he's completely revitalized his career. Over the last three seasons, he's led or co-led the NFL in field-goal percentage while continuously expanding his range.

During the first 15 seasons of Folk's career (2007-22), his average make came from 36.0 yards. But over the last three campaigns, that number has skyrocketed to 39.3. In his age-40 and age-41 seasons, he's checked in with average make distances of 40.8 and 40.2 yards, respectively, and those also happened to be his two highest-KVA go-rounds. He's made 18 kicks from 50-plus yards in that three-year stretch, and his lone long-range misses came from 51 yards in 2023 and 55 yards last year.

Folk is now entering his age-42 season (he'll hit the number on Nov. 5) and transitioning from the New York Jets to the Atlanta Falcons. He's given no reason to believe the bottom is going to fall out from underneath him anytime soon, and staving off Father Time for another year would continue to cement the idea that professional kickers are evolving in just about every possible way.

76.63 KVA

Folk is one of 13 active kickers in the top 100 for career KVA, but he and 11 others are trying to chase down Chris Boswell, who enters the 2026 season with a remarkable 76.63 KVA.

Will Reichard and Cam Little should both join the top 100 if they continue on at their current paces, but Boswell is the only player with a legitimate chance to join the all-time top 20 by the end of the upcoming season.

He's coming off a down year (by his standards, at least) in which he posted just 4.32 KVA, but he was better than the raw numbers indicated. He had a 30-yarder blocked through no fault of his own — blame Pat Freiermuth for whiffing on the block — and had a PAT tipped by Keondre Jackson. If he receives better luck, he should come closer to the 2024 efforts in which he led the league and posted the No. 27 KVA season in NFL history.

Boswell needs 9.67 KVA in his 12th season to move past Fred Cox, Matt Prater, Mike Vanderjagt, and Jeff Wilkins for the final spot in the top 20.

49 made field goals

When Jason Myers drilled five field goals in the Seattle Seahawks' Super Bowl victory, he moved past 2011 David Akers and 2025 Ka'imi Fairbairn for the most successful conversions in a single season (49). Not just that, but he also took down 2006 LaDainian Tomlinson (186) and established a new single-season points record at 206.

Maintaining that type of volume is dependent on the offense in addition to the kicker's prowess. Myers and Fairbairn both benefitted from playing for teams that were great at marching down the field but weren't quite as adept at punching the ball into the end zone.

That could be true once again in 2026, and it wouldn't be shocking if either of them — or a different option entirely — knocks through enough attempts to reach the 50s. But there's no guarantee setting a new volume standard would lead to one of the NFL's most valuable kicking seasons, which is where Myers and Fairbairn's 2025 divergence is instructive.

Myers' 49 makes came from an average of 39.3 yards, and his seven misses from 45.7, including 26- and 36-yard chip shots. Putting aside extra points, his distance distribution resulted in a solid 4.79 KVA. Fairbairn, on the other hand, had 48 makes from an average of 39.7 yards and just three misses from an average of 52.3 yards. His added accuracy and the difficulty of his misses yielded a league-best 15.03 KVA.

That, in a nutshell, is why my kicker rankings differ drastically from what you'll see in the fantasy football community.

52-yard long

Boasting the reigning MVP in Matthew Stafford and the league's most imposing defensive force in Myles Garrett, the Los Angeles Rams have a loaded roster heading into the season, one that leaves them among the no-doubt Super Bowl contenders. If Harrison Mevis is able to assert himself as one of the league's truly elite kicking forces, they'll be even more dangerous.

Mevis enjoyed an impressive rookie season, but the Thiccer Kicker wasn't often counted on for long-range attempts as the Rams elected to either punt or attempt a fourth-down conversion. Though he went 18-of-19 on his field-goal tries and 48-of-48 on his PATs, he only took four attempts from 45-plus yards (including a missed 48-yarder that kept him from perfection). He never hit from beyond 52 yards — our final key number.

If Mevis proves worthy of trust from further outside, the Rams will only add to their abundance of weapons. And given his collegiate history, that's by no means outside the realm of realistic possibilities. He knocked a walk-off 61-yarder through the uprights with room to spare to beat Kansas State during the 2023 season and hit from 56 in each of the two prior campaigns.

Mevis has enough of a leg that 52 yards remaining his NFL high would register as a disappointment in 2026.

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