We take as a given that Justin Tucker is the best kicker of all time, yet unlike the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Chris Boswell, he is falling short of current standards. Standards meaning what NFL teams now expect modern kickers to do: reliably kick from distance.
From that perspective, there is nobody better than Chris Boswell. Justin Tucker used to be one of the best to ever do it as well, but lately, he simply hasn’t been. At least he hasn’t been if the only element you analyze is the result: made kick or no good.
Since the start of the 2022 season, Justin Tucker is just 10-for-21 on field goal attempts of 50-plus yards. With two misses on two attempts so far in 2024, he is now under 50 percent in that span. Yet even with that transformative dip, he is 58-for-87 for his career.
Even at 66.7 percent, that is very respectable, especially considering perhaps nobody else is asked to attempt longer kicks than Justin Tucker, including an NFL-record 66 yards. He is tied for the second-most makes from 50-plus ever with 58, though he is a distant second to Matt Prater’s 81. Prater, of course, played in Denver, and in domes. Chris Boswell’s longest made field goal is 59 yards, in comparison, and they don’t often ask him to attempt longer.
But you can’t ignore the results. Among those with 30-plus field goal attempts of 50-plus yards, Boswell has the second-best average ever. He is 34-for-41 in his career, including 4-for-4 this year. The only player with a higher percentage is Chase McLaughlin, who is 26-for-31.
While Justin Tucker is still exceptional from within 50 yards, is it fair to call his current “GOAT” status into question? In light of the fact that we hold kickers by the 50-yard standard today, does he deserve such critique? Perhaps we need more nuance first.
Only five players in NFL history have attempted 20-plus field goals of 56-plus yards, Tucker being one of them. In that range, he is only 9-for-23 for his career, compared to Prater’s 19-for-28. Chris Boswell only has nine such attempts, but he has made nine of them. So while the Steelers don’t ask if of him often, he does deliver. He is 0-for-1 from 60-plus, though, missing from 61 last year.
Interestingly, while Justin Tucker is 0-for-2 this year from 50-plus, the rest of the league is is 35-for-37. That includes the 4-for-4 from Chris Boswell, and 6-for-6 from Texans K Ka’imi Fairbairn. Other than them, nobody else has attempted more than three so far. But Tucker is the only kicker with more than one attempt without a make.
But maybe Justin Tucker is the Mariano Rivera of kickers. Every time Rivera blew a save late in his career, it fueled the debate: Is he losing it? He never did, of course. Tucker’s performance from 50-plus is unusual, but perhaps not revelatory. For example, over the past three years, six of his misses have come from 56-plus yards, including three from 60-plus. He even attempted a 67-yard field goal in 2022. And he did have one blocked.
But there are certainly chinks in his armor in terms of his reputation as the greatest. He even dipped below 90 percent for his career. Since 2020, he has only connected on 90 percent of his field goals once. So who wants to make the argument for Chris Boswell?
