Something terrible happened the Sunday before last. Baltimore Ravens K Justin Tucker missed a field goal. As a matter of fact, he’s missed five field goals this season, tied for the second-most misses he’s had in any one season. While he missed six field goals in 2022, he attempted 43 and made an NFL-high 37.
But with 11 misses on 69 attempts over the past two seasons, Tucker’s lost some of his luster recently. Enough that his career field goal percentage dipped below 90 percent. Enough that he is no longer the most accurate kicker in NFL history anymore. That title now belongs to the Atlanta Falcons’ Younghoe Koo, who is 24-for-25 on the season and has made 90.1 percent of his career field goal attempts.
“In a given moment, when I’m on the field preparing to send a ball through the uprights, I can tell you that’s the last thing that I’m worried about”, Tucker told Jamison Hensley of ESPN recently when asked about dropping to second place in the all-time accuracy list.
“That’s like the furthest thing from my mind. All I’m focused on is making that kick in that moment in time, for what it’s worth, gathering all the data that I need to, applying what I’ve learned over the years in that given moment to do my best to put the ball through the uprights”.
It should be noted that while he has 11 misses over the past two seasons, only two of them have come from within 49 yards. Both of them were from 40-plus, and he is 12-for-14 over the past two season from 40-49, or 85.7 percent. Inside 49 yards, he is 48-for-50, or 96 percent.
Of course, while Tucker is probably asked kick from 50-plus more than any other kicker, or at least as much as those who are near the top of the list, you cannot dismiss those kicks in today’s day and age. It is required in the NFL in the 2020s that you can make those kicks as the new standard.
Yet Tucker hasn’t been making them as much as he used to. He is just 1-for-5 on attempts of 50-plus yards in 2023, and he was 9-for-14 last year, 10-for-19 overall in the past two seasons. That’s 9 of his 11 misses from 50-plus, or 81.8 percent, coming from extreme distance.
I don’t suspect Tucker’s reputation will suffer too much of a blow due to his recent misses, though. This isn’t the first time he’s been in the 80s in accuracy percentage, and the fact that he has never been lower is a testament to his consistency.
As far as Koo goes, he still has a long way to go. Tucker has attempted more than 400 field goals in his career. Koo is at 162. At 29 years old, he presumably still has a long career ahead of him. That’s a long time to maintain a level of consistency that will keep him ahead of Tucker’s pace. And I don’t think anybody would be willing to crown him the greatest kicker of all time right now.
