You never can be quite sure what can change a game. One play goes another way and perhaps the entire afternoon unfolds differently. The concept of the butterfly effect is hardly a foreign one within popular culture. And it’s quite easy for fans to ponder the implications of the flap of a wing, especially after the team loses.
One particularly galling bit of hot air struck the Pittsburgh Steelers this past Sunday when the officials ruled that G Isaac Seumalo was lined up offside on what had been a successful 56-yard field goal try. As a result of the penalty, they had to move back five more yards, with K Chris Boswell pushing the ball wide right on the 61-yard attempt.
“Obviously, Boz isn’t happy, dude”, his long snapper, Christian Kuntz, told Cameron Heyward on the Not Just Football podcast. “Like, he strikes a 56-yard field goal in the rain in Acrisure, like, not easy to do. And then they want to push us back five yards to 61, which, come on”.
The miss from 61 yards was an unfortunate one, dinging his career percentage rate down to 80 percent on attempts of 50-plus yards. I’d just written about how he was the most accurate kicker in NFL history from that distance, but that one puts him into second place behind Younghoe Koo at 80.8 percent.
That particular reason wasn’t why Boswell was upset, though. It was the fact that he nailed a 56-yarder only to be asked to kick from 61 for no good reason. He let his feelings known on social media, posting images of how the Steelers lined up before the original kick with “laughing with tears” emojis, expressing incredulity over the call.
“From that picture where it showed [how the unit was set], it was kind of laughable”, Kuntz said. He then explained that as a result of the re-kick, they did not have the opportunity to use their optimal kicking ball, an especially unfortunate turn of events in wet conditions.
“We get three game balls a game. We kick the [third] one. It’s a fresh ball. It’s brand new, it flies well”, he said. “Then instead of grabbing that same three ball that hit the net, drying it off, and putting it back down—that’s the freshest ball at the time—or giving the two ball, they throw in the one ball, which had already been snapped for five, six punts, rolled on the ground, it’s definitely waterlogged. They kind of just screwed us a little bit”.
Watching the two kicks, it’s clear that Boswell did not get as clean of a connection on the attempt from 61 yards. While you have to approach a longer kick differently, it is reasonable to believe that the conditions and the football played some role in where that football went.
As a result of the miss, the Steelers went into halftime on a low note with no momentum, trailing 9-3. If they got the field goal, would it have made a difference in the outcome? It’s impossible to say, but it’s not a discussion that ever should have been necessary in the first place.
