Veteran kicker Chris Boswell entered Sunday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals with the longest active streak in the NFL, having connected on 22 consecutive field goal attempts. That included going 11-for-11 so far through the first eight games of the 2020 season for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
With the offense struggling to finish off drives or to take advantage of good field position, they needed to call upon Boswell’s services three times in the first half, and he made good on all three of them, extending his active streak and record to 25 by halftime.
That was arguably secondary, however, to the fact that his first field goal of the day pushed him back ahead of Shaun Suisham as the most accurate kicker in team history. It took him two years to recover from his disastrous 2018 season, during which he only connected on 13 of 20 field goal attempts and had his job seriously threatened, but it appears, a year and a half on, that he has fully rebounded.
Boswell entered the game with a field goal percentage of 87.90, rounded up. Suisham retired after a career-ending injury having connected on 124 of 141 attempts as a member of the Steelers for a success rate of 87.94 percent.
With his first field goal of the day, his 139th make on 158 attempts, Boswell brought his career field goal percentage up to 87.97 percent. He had already been the most accurate kicker in team history prior to the 2018 season, and in fact would have qualified at the time as the most accurate field goal kicker in NFL history if he had the qualifying 100 attempts before that one year torpedoed his average. He only had 10 misses on 95 attempts during his first three seasons for a field goal percentage of 89.5. Justin Tucker has since raised the bar by pushing the mark north of 90 percent.
The Steelers ultimately called upon Boswell three times to kick a field goal in the game, all in the first half, and he made each of them. He is now 14 out of 14 on the season, and 43 out of 45 dating back to the start of the 2019 season, an accuracy of 95.55 percent. His career accuracy percentage is now up to 88.13 after his three makes against the Bengals, which ranks fifth all time, the four ahead of him all active kickers, including Tucker and Lambo.
That was actually identical to the numbers that Tucker had put up since the start of the 2019 season heading into last night’s game, but the Ravens kicker did add one in that game, so he is now 44 for 46 dating back to last season. However, Josh Lambo, who is on injured reserve, has the highest accuracy percentage since then, hitting 38 of 39 attempts for a 97.4 percent conversion rate.
