NFL kickers have been benefiting this season from a new rule that gives them more time to break in the K-balls, the special footballs the NFL provides for use on kicking plays. Kickers like to have time to work the balls to their liking, and this season the NFL changed its rules so that kickers can have the balls they’ll be kicking on Sunday in advance, and prepare them to make them easier to kick.
But there’s one exception to the rule that K-balls are brought in for all kicking plays: In a hurry-up situation when the field goal team is scrambling onto the field while the clock is running, the officials just keep the offensive ball on the field, rather than using the K-ball. That happened before halftime in two different games today. And both times, the kickers missed without the K-ball.
For the Bears, it was kicker Cairo Santos missing from 58 yards after sprinting onto the field just before time expired on the second quarter. For the Panthers, it was kicker Ryan Fitzgerald missing from 32 yards after Andy Dalton took a sack and the field goal team unexpectedly had to hurry onto the field.
A sample size of two missed kicks does not, of course, prove that the regular footballs are much harder to kick than the K-balls. And for all the talk of the K-balls benefiting kickers on long field goals this season, the accuracy rate on field goals from 50 yards and beyond isn’t much different than it was last year: Heading into today’s games, NFL kickers had made 70.2 percent of their field goals from 50 yards or longer this season. Last year, NFL kickers made 69.9 percent of their field goals from 50 yards or longer.
But kickers always prefer to use their own broken-in footballs. And it’s notable that today, when two kickers were prevented from doing so, both of them missed.
