Before vision issues forced Mike Westhoff to step away midseason as the Denver Broncos’ special teams coordinator, he had studied, mastered and changed one of three pro football branches more than anybody. The trick: never stop evolving.

Even warmups provided opportunities for assessment. Westhoff watched kickers, wanting to get a feel for how far they could kick and from how far away they might consider trying. A few years back, he began to notice a major difference: Their range seemed to be expanding.

For most of his career, on any attempt of 50 yards or longer, Westhoff often planted returners in the end zone, starting in 1982, when he became an NFL special teams coach for the first time. Each of those attempts meant odds as long as the kicks in question, and woefully short boots could be returned. But Westhoff stopped doing that in recent seasons, because what was considered “makeable” kept getting longer. “I’m telling you,” he said earlier this season, “I’m watching guys warm up, and it’s not uncommon to see them hit 60-yard field goals time after time.”

Westhoff noticed early what all football fans now see in high-definition clarity. Modern kickers, once cast to the side of real practices, position prefaced occasionally with “idiot” by their quarterbacks, are afterthoughts no longer.

Modern kickers are athletes who can thump. Consider: For the first 70 years of pro football, the entire league produced two successful attempts from 60-plus yards. Two! Brandon Aubrey, one young athlete who happens to kick footballs, has made two of those in 2024 alone. He converted two others, easily, that penalties negated. One would have tied the NFL record of 66 yards by Justin Tucker against the Detroit Lions on Sept. 26, 2021.

Aubrey isn’t someone who could have played professional soccer. He did. He won the 2013 men’s soccer national championship at Notre Dame, went to Toronto FC in the first round of the MLS draft, played for three pro teams at varying levels and then switched to football.

After two USFL seasons, Aubrey signed with the Dallas Cowboys in July 2023. Two months later, he became their starting kicker. Five months after that, he made first-team All-Pro as a rookie. Not even a month into this season, he tied a franchise record with a 65-yarder against the Baltimore Ravens. That kick cleared the crossbar with feet to spare.

Tom Brady soon called Aubrey the “Stephen Curry of kicking.”

Still, Aubrey isn’t some football-kicking unicorn. He embodies the trend that Westhoff noticed years ago in warmups. There’s Joe Slye, whose coaches in New England think so highly of his leg that they opted for a 68-yarder—in blustery conditions—over a Hail Mary in the dying seconds of a loss to the Indianapolis Colts last Sunday. There’s Dustin Hopkins, in Cleveland, nailing his first 10 attempts with a new team from 50-plus. There’s Matt Prater, in Arizona, going 9-of-12 from 50-plus last season. And there’s Houston’s Ka’imi Fairbairn. Since the start of 2022, he has connected on 23-of-27 attempts from 50 or beyond, including a once-unfathomable 12-for-15 from that range through 12 weeks of this season. That’s already an NFL record.

He’s also not alone.

The Year of the Kicker is here.

Few positional evolutions in football history are this striking. Field goals predate the 20th century. And the process of making one has changed over the past 140 some years, from value (five points to four to three) to goalposts (borrowed from rugby; shorter in height, then gradually raised; placed on the goal line, then at the back of the end zone; then, goal line; then, back) to rules that dictated difficulty baked into the gig. But it’s still basically the same exercise as when football started.

Before 2013 or so, the position hadn’t evolved as much as virtually every other position in pro football. The last round of major change occurred in the 1970s. In ’72, NFL officials narrowed the distance between each hashmark, to 18.5 feet. Goalposts still rose from the goal line then—leading to oddities, such as a 9-yard field goal.

In 1973, kickers made 543 field goals, accounting for 23% of the scoring league-wide. The next year, they accounted for 8%. Overall attempts plummeted in lockstep. The NFL made clear its stance: It didn’t want games dominated by a deluge of conversions. Kickers had simply become too good at their craft.

Kickers adjusted. Improved. Evolved. Even then, rule changes continued to make their jobs harder. The spot of the football after missed attempts kept moving to benefit offenses that took possession.

This might seem like long-ago history. But each step factors into the modern kicking evolution. Advances in accuracy came first. By the 2013 season, though, professional kickers were more accurate, collectively, than they’d ever been. Mike Vanderjagt, the aforementioned “idiot” to his Hall of Fame quarterback, retired from the Indianapolis Colts in ’06 as the most accurate kicker in league history. He currently ranks ninth—and only because young, elite kickers such as Aubrey have yet to qualify.

Evolution didn’t stop in 2013. It shifted, powered by one kicker with a strong leg and accuracy. Tucker became the position’s gold standard and sped its evolution just by doing his job exceedingly well. He’s struggling this season, converting attempts at a career low. In The Year of the Kicker, there’s some irony at play.

Tucker’s struggles wouldn’t be so obvious if not for the evolution that he powered with his Hall of Fame-caliber right leg. Four of his six misses this season through 12 weeks came from attempts of 50 yards or longer. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal until recently.

No longer are kickers trotting onto fields late in fourth quarters for desperation attempts, their chances low, odds favoring failure. Better accuracy from that distance is now a prerequisite for employment. Modern kickers, Westhoff says, are mostly Tucker clones. Or even better versions. All possess “leg strength that’s better than ever,” Westhoff says, “and a level of physicality that is better than ever.”

Longer, with accuracy. That’s the critical delineation. In Week 1 of this season, NFL kickers sailed 23 attempts of 50 yards or more toward uprights. Twenty-one of those attempts went through. Five separate kickers made at least two apiece.

Through two weeks: Kickers were 35-of-39 from 50-plus. In comparison, consider 2006: NFL kickers made 40 field goals over 50 yards that season, while connecting at a comparably putrid 47.1% clip.

When it comes to how much accuracy kickers must sacrifice to move back for the longest distances, old-timer Nick Folk of the Tennessee Titans cannot objectively precisely pinpoint the ratio involved. He can unspool the sentiment many parents espouse after having a second child: It’s more than twice as difficult. How much? Depends on a million factors. “If you’re going from 55 yards to 60, that five yards is big,” Folk says.

Even then, he must differentiate to account for the evolution. “For a lot of guys 1733492883, that’s just a normal kick, normal swing.”

A closer examination of relevant data bolsters all points above. Kicking in the NFL has changed. But some framework around these changes, while grounded in accuracy, has sorta doinked.

Consider individual field goal attempts, league-wide, from 30 to 39 yards in every season since 1980. From 2013 onward, accuracy began a consistent, significant uptick. But kickers from earlier eras have been accurate, just not as accurate collectively.

Injection of nuance 1: NFL kickers are not across the board more accurate in 2024 than they were in ’13. They’re similarly accurate, especially from shorter distances.

Consider attempts from 40 to 49 yards within the same time frame. Attempts and makes have continued to rise since 2012. But accuracy from 40-49 has not increased alongside attempts; in fact, accuracy from this distance has been all over the place.

Injection of nuance 2: NFL kickers were taking and making more attempts in that range. But their collective accuracy has actually dropped the past two seasons, while attempts held steady.

The real, more obvious, more important takeaway starts at a distance professional placekickers once considered akin to landing on the moon before 1969. Stay there, at attempts over 50-plus. It’s not like zero kickers ever made one. Several of the longest conversions in league history are from earlier eras—one, a 63-yarder from Tom Dempsey, went through in ’70. The longest field goal ever kicked—Ove Johansson, 69 yards, for Abilene Christian—was in ’76.

Injection of nuance 3: What’s truly new about this season for NFL kickers isn’t that the Cowboys considered a 71-yard Aubrey attempt, after the league-record-tying 66 yard kick was taken off the scoreboard for a delay of game penalty in Week 1 against the Cleveland Browns. Way back in 2008, Lane Kiffin sent Sebastian Janikowski out for a 76-yard prayer. Janikowski tried. But his “try” fell nearly 20 yards short of the uprights, leading to mockery.

That’s the difference. When the Cowboys considered turning Aubrey loose for a 71-yard try after that penalty, few, if any, mocked the coaches’ decision to huddle and talk through the parameters in play.

It wasn’t long ago that kickers missed more attempts than they made from 50-plus. That last happened in 2007, as coaches called for punt teams over field-goal units for most attempts at 55 yards or beyond. There were 11 of those … this season … in the first two weeks. Fairbairn made six by himself.

Injection of nuance 4: For historical data in the 50-plus range, seven of the 10 best collective seasons are from 2015 or later. Through 13 weeks of ’24, kickers collectively averaged 0.4 field goals from that distance. They’ve collectively reached even 0.3 from that range in only two other years—last season and the season before that. In fact, through those 13 weeks, kickers sailed 147 successful attempts from 50-plus, which already ranks as the third-most in NFL history—with five weeks left. Twelve additional conversions from that range will mark an NFL record.

It will not be the last.

Now, an NFL kicker who can’t routinely connect from 50 or more isn’t … an NFL kicker.

John Carney retired from the NFL in 2010. Sort of. The undrafted, Super Bowl XLIV champion, now working as a private coach for kickers, laughs about the paperwork. “Never officially retired,” Carney says. “I was just waiting for the right time.”

The evolution renders a comeback impossible. More resources. More coaches. More camps. Each more grounded in more science. All, combined, make for better athletes as a baseline. Carney adds the disclaimer right away for Injection of nuance 5: There were great athletes who became kickers in earlier eras. Just not as many of them.

To describe even the basics of this shifting landscape as “different” or “dramatically different” still doesn’t capture just how much NFL kickers have changed. Those same athletes, already improved by greater athletic ability, the ones with better resources and more technical approaches, can also now train with methods and resources far better and plentiful than those available to Carney.

He attended one camp, the only one he knew of that existed at the time. Hosted by Garo Yepremian, the colorful kicker who booted for four franchises, primarily the Miami Dolphins, where his blooper-reel-staple pass in Super Bowl VII still lives in infamy. Even that “kicking camp” featured football kickers and fútbol players. That way enough prospects would attend. “It was more soccer than football,” Carney says. “There just weren’t a lot of resources.”

Now, quality coaching abounds. So much so that Carney, when asked to name camps he respects for kickers, lists several and sends multiple follow-up messages to not leave anyone out. There are that many. Even special teams coordinators have their own coaching trees.

He points to the ubiquity —of cell phones; of training videos on YouTube; of common answers to troubleshoot typical questions; and of streaming services that show dozens of games each week. Carney had zero training videos available to him. He didn’t have a RedZone channel. He had a camcorder … that played VHS tapes … quality, poor … sometimes, he couldn’t see the kicker’s foot on the screen, or entire frames with actual kicks were absent from the recording.

All that, plus advances in technology and equipment, reduced injury rates, reductions enabled faster recovery timetables. It’s easy to see the surface factors in why kicking in the NFL has boomed. Carney never had compression boots to ease leg pain; never had slow-motion replay. He never had cryotherapy or vibrating massage rollers or Tom Brady pointing athletes toward pliability. Never had shoes like modern kickers’ kicks. Never trained specifically for explosiveness or resistance. Never reached anywhere near this level of mobility that modern kickers must shape.

“Why are they exceptional?” Carney asks, before answering his own question.

“There’s always going to be a natural evolution of athletes.”

What else changed? League rules and quality. Westhoff lays that out in relation to two dominoes he considers most important within the evolution.

First domino: Beyond physical and technical improvements made by individual kickers, everything and everyone around them is better, and sharper, too. For simplicity, consider kickers, holders and long snappers as a single entity—a battery, like in baseball. For decades, most teams trotted out oversized offensive linemen to snap the ball to holders who were typically not holders; certainly few, if any, understood the nuances and science of the gig.

The snappers in question had to be large, out of necessity, in part because league rules allowed defensive linemen to push centers, or push through them, immediately after snaps for field goal attempts. Westhoff turned to specialists earlier than his counterparts. Sometimes, he used different snappers for punts and field goals, trading extra precision on field goal attempts for heightened risk of blocks. “That’s just the way it was,” he says. “You had to do it.”

Coaches like him needed one more critical element: changes in league rules. For most of football’s history, alterations made kickers’ jobs more difficult. Breaks would come—mercifully, eventually. Westhoff often served on committees that helped shape them. Kickers and punters became part of the off-limits “unnecessary contact” pool (2005). Defenders on block units were forced to position their helmets (’06) and then their bodies (’10) outside of snappers on attempts. Kickers joined “defenseless” players (’11). Long snappers were soon added (’13).

In 2015, whenever teams showed kicking formations, defenders could no longer push teammates from behind at the line of the scrimmage. Two years later, the practice of having defensive players attempt to leap over the kicking team’s line was prohibited. Long snappers had never been more or better protected. Which is how long-snapping specialists proliferated across the league.

Westhoff jokes that modern long snappers aren’t the hulks of yesteryear. They resemble “high-school Phys-ed teachers,” he says.

Modern snappers such as Indianapolis’s Luke Rhodes, who is the highest paid at the position in the NFL, are so precise that they can count the number of rotations on any single snap, after determining an ideal number in order for holders to point the laces forward with perfection and ease. Most holders are still backup QBs or punters. But now, they have efficient, nearly ideal snaps to place and hold on fields. That job—holding for field-goal and extra-point attempts—has become remarkably easy. Most winners of fantasy football leagues could do it.

Add all that up: rule changes birth specialization. Specialization nets refinement. Advances in science optimize technique. Efficiency heightens from advancements in all areas. Consistency comes next.

Westhoff asks: “When’s the last time you’ve seen a real, real bad snap?”

Westhoff answers: “You just don’t see it.”

Second domino: the introduction of the K-ball, a special version used–pardon the pun–just for kicks. “It will constrict,” Westhoff says. “It’s not illegal in any way, shape or form. There were times when it was. but it’s friendly, I’ll put it that way. [Now, using one is] like rubbing dirt on a baseball.” 

K-balls are essentially more broken-in than more typical footballs. K-balls came under scrutiny in the 1990s, when teams would doctor them with tactics like running them through a dryer. In ’99, in an attempt to cut down on tomfoolery, the league mandated that K-balls be kept in sealed bags and not opened until games started.

Subsequent changes to league rules helped make more intentionally distressed K-balls the norm. In 2008, the NFL began allowing each team to designate a preparer of K-balls on game days, while limiting the actions—wet towels, certain brushes—any designee could utilize. Kickers no longer had to boom what were essentially new, not-broken-in balls each week. During the global pandemic, the rules shifted once more—designees could do that work inside their own locker room, leading to K-balls that better fit each kicker’s individual preference.

There’s more. The fields all kickers kick on have improved from advancements in grass maintenance or the installation of turf. More powerful kickers are using quad muscles to generate that power rather than groins. More franchises continue to build domed stadiums.

Even moving back the PAT snap created an unintended consequence: It gave kickers a harder baseline and more practice in a range that grew at the top end but actually shrunk overall. Extra points allow kickers to gauge technique and make corrections on attempts that remain relatively easy. Key difference: They’re using the same leg swing.

And, when the evolution became too obvious to ignore, coaches’ mindsets shifted, too. More accuracy meant more trust. More long-distance accuracy meant more trust in long-distance attempts. 

Now, Folk says, “Coaches realize that points are at a premium, and so are longer field goals.”

Most teams can now snap and kick field-goal attempts in an average of around 1.3 seconds, Westhoff says. That’s why attempts have become so difficult to block. It doesn’t take long for Westhoff to do the math. “You’ve got bigger, stronger, more technique-conscious, more-powerful individual kickers,” he says. “You’ve got a perfect snap, a perfect hold, a friendly ball and a less-invasive rush.”

Pause. Punchline.

“What the hell did you think was going to happen?”

Occasionally, Folk will marvel at his start. As a high school kicker in California, he met, through no more than kismet, a bonafide coach for aspiring booters. Chris Sailer became a mentor, sharpened Folk’s technical ability and helped Folk land a scholarship at Arizona. Without Sailer, Folk might not have kicked in college. Kickers needed someone like Sailer then. Now, Sailer has a national brand and a booming instructional business. But aspiring punters and kickers don’t need him nearly as much as they once did.

Folk, meanwhile, became the Tom Brady—or George Blanda, for earlier generations—of modern NFL kickers. But even Folk knows he’s still playing, in part, because of how he fits within his positional evolution. Folk endures, still, in 2024, because he has always been above-average from 50-plus. Through Week 12 of this season, he had attempted 70 kicks in that range, making 47 of them, a 67.1% clip.

The modern kicking evolution speaks to what has always been pro kickers’ greatest collective strength: adaptability. Rules change. Football changes. Coaches’ mindsets shift. They take whatever parameters they’re given, trot onto fields, aim footballs at goalposts that are sulfur yellow, color applied by powder coats rather than paint to last longer, and send oblong balls downfield using only their bodies and their feet.

Carney feels like most kickers from previous eras. He’s not wistful, stealing joy via comparisons. He’s happy that a wider audience finally notices what he knew all along. “Kicking,” he says, “is such an integral part of NFL football.”

Folk predicts the obvious: more of everything—science, coaches, resources. He says this in October, two weeks before his 40th birthday. Perhaps continual advancements will allow him to play another year—or five.

Evaluations of college kickers are already changing. Someone like Nick Sciba, the NCAA’s all-time accuracy leader when his career at Wake Forest ended in 2021, will appeal less to NFL evaluators because his 89.9% career clip will be outweighed by a career long of 49 yards. College prospects such as Harrison Mevis of Missouri, meanwhile, will get chances, looks. The Carolina Panthers cut Mevis back in August. They looked at him not for his 83.5% accuracy at Mizzou but because he made 13-of-18 attempts from 50-plus in college, including a 61-yarder against Kansas State.

Longer, with accuracy. That’s the baseline now. Folk’s not sure if one of his counterparts will attempt a field goal from 70 yards or more this season. Such an attempt, he notes, would give the ball to the opposition at the other 40-yard-line, making a 58-yard attempt the other way right after a miss instantly possible.  A miss would nearly guarantee the other offense points. “Even then,” he says, “it’s not, like, crazy” to consider this notion.

The first 70-yard-or-greater field goal in NFL history, Carney believes, will be converted “within the next couple years.”

Consider Aubrey the prime candidate. In 29 career games, he has made 20 of 21 from 50-plus.

All of which leads to the usual place. Kickers have adapted, once more, better than ever before. Historic trends have dropped slightly, as they tend to, in the past few weeks. (Even Aubrey participated in a game some tabbed as the worst-ever for two special teams units, against the Washington Commanders in November.) Even then, the kickers know: They’ve become too good at their jobs again.

There were more field goals (141) than touchdowns (136) through the first two weeks, marking a league first. There were 73 made field goals in Week 2, or four more than the previous record for a single week.

The expectation is another course correction—soon. (One guess: What seemed like a goofy experiment at the Pro Bowl in 2015, another narrowing of the goal posts, from 18 feet to 14, makes sense.)

Folk, when prompted, has ideas. The NFL could add a second set of uprights, a shorter-and-skinnier version placed inside the larger, taller ones. Field goals sailed between the skinny points would be worth one additional point. Longer conversions could be worth additional points, too.

This, Folk says, “would put a little more fun in the game.”

They’re not hallucinatory, such notions. Not in 2024. As Folk and his brethren have proven, in the Year of the Kicker, pretty much anything is possible, from anywhere on the field.