It wasn’t a perfect night, but it was certainly a damn good one for veteran Pittsburgh Steelers kicker Chris Boswell. While he did miss his first extra point try of the season, he also successfully made all three of his field goal attempts, two of which were from beyond 50 yards, the third of which won the game.
“Boz is a serial killer”, defensive captain Cameron Heyward said after the game. “He’s too calm in some situations. I love Boz’s demeanor. The moment’s never too big for him. I know everybody talks about the guy up in Baltimore, he’s a great kicker, but Boz is a great kicker as well. We always tease him, they’re 1A and 1B. Boz is yet to prove that he’s 1B. A lot of games left to be played, but can’t say enough about what Boz does”.
Oh, and he recovered a fumble on a kickoff as well, though Heyward wasn’t as thrilled about it as you normally would be about a takeaway. “Boz needs to get the hell out of the way”, he said, jokingly, in his post-game press conference. “We were that close to putting him back on the injury report”.
It was just a week earlier that Boswell suffered a concussion after taking a hit while attempting a pass on a fake field goal attempt toward the end of the first half against the Cleveland Browns. “It was a rough half”, Heyward recalled. “I’ve been on the side where we haven’t had kickers, whether that was by injury, or by bringing in some kickers that couldn’t kick, but that Boz is pretty nice”.
Boz is pretty nice, in fact. He is the third-most accurate field goal kicker in NFL history, behind only Justin Tucker of the Baltimore Ravens and Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs. After last night’s 3-for-3 performance, he has made 161 out of 182 career field goal attempts for a career field goal percentage of 88.46.
Both Tucker and Butker are over 90 percent for their career, where Boswell would also be if not for the disastrous 2018 season that nearly cost him his job, going 13-20 on the year, the only thing saving him being the offense rarely needing to settle for field goals. Take out that one season, and his career average is 91.35, even better than Tucker. But of course it doesn’t work that way.
Tucker, for the record, is 16-for-17 on the season, with a miss in the 40-49-yard range. Butler is 11-for-12, missing from 50-plus. Boswell is 15-for-16, his lone miss coming from the 40-49-yard range as well.
And he is 5-for-5 from 50-plus yards on the year, as well, which is remarkable. It’s the first time he has ever attempted that many in a single season, but he is now 15-for-18 from beyond 50 in his career, and hasn’t missed from that distance since 2019. He only attempted one last year, but it was a franchise-record 59 yards. His 56-yarder earlier this season set a Heinz Field record. So it’s been a pretty good year.
A killer year, one might say.
