Like Chris Boswell, the Pittsburgh Steelers are right where we are: sitting at home being mad. Although they managed to make the playoffs in 2023, they lost in the first round. It has now been seven years without a postseason victory, the longest drought in franchise history. The question is what to do next.
The first step is always taking stock of what happened and what is left. That’s part of the exit meeting process, in which coaches meet with each player. They discuss the season and their expectations moving forward—and potentially their role within it.
While we might not know all the details about what goes on between head coach Mike Tomlin and his players during these exit meetings, we do know how we would conduct those meetings if they were let up to us. So here are the Depot’s exit meetings for the Steelers’ roster following the 2023 season.
Player: Chris Boswell
Position: Kicker
Experience: 9 Years
As you may notice, we are now in the special teams portion of our season exit meeting series for the starting lineup. We begin with the only specialist anybody cares about in a positive way, K Chris Boswell. The nine-year veteran returned to form in big way during the 2023 season with one of his best seasons.
He scored over 100 points for the fifth time in his career, closing in on 1,000 since entering the league. During the past year, Boswell connected on 29 of 31 field goal attempts. His 93.5-percent success rate ties for the second-highest of his career. In 2020, he missed just one of 20 field goal attempts for a 95-percent success rate. He also went exactly 29-for-31 during the 2019 season.
Notably, he also continues to rewrite the Steelers’ franchise record books for long kicks. For the third straight year, he successfully connected on six or more field goals of 50-plus yards. He has made 21 field goals on 25 attempts from that range since 2021. Accordingly, he is among the most accurate kickers from distance in NFL history.
Boswell is still recovering from his occasionally uncharacteristically poor seasons in career metrics. At the conclusion of the 2023 season, he boasts a career 87.17-percent success rate. That marks the sixth-best percentage in the history of the game. The five kickers ahead of him are all active and four of them came into the league after him. Only Justin Tucker at number on, over 90 percent, has been around longer.
As an aside, Tucker briefly dipped below 90 percent this past season and fell from his perch at the top. Younghoe Koo briefly surpassed him before missing four field goals in his final five games. He had missed only one prior to that.
As for Boswell, one of his two misses on the season came from 61 yards, the other from 45. He attempted the former at the end of the first half against the Jacksonville Jaguars. He previously connected from 56 yards, but the officials flagged Isaac Seumalo as offsides. Boswell disagreed.
