Arrowhead Pride
Welcome back to the Arrowhead Pride Mailbag! Each week, watch for your opportunity to submit your Kansas City Chiefs questions in The Feed, which is found on AP’s home page.
Ahead of a Monday night matchup between the Chiefs and the Jacksonville Jaguars — on the heels of a big Week 4 victory — let’s see what is on our readers’ minds.
Is it worthwhile bringing in competition at kicker, just in case Harrison Butker doesn’t improve? Maybe on the practice squad?
A couple of weeks ago, we explained how the remaining guaranteed money on Harrison Butker’s contract likely marries him to the Chiefs through the 2026 season. If the team added a kicker, it would probably be explained as Butker recovering from an injury and being placed on the Reserve/Injured list. I do not see Kansas City giving him an ultimatum to compete for his job this season or next.
Kickers are notoriously creatures of habit. With Butker, there are two things I wonder about.
One is whether the new motion he discussed during training camp — intended to prevent him from dropping to a knee during field goal attempts — is affecting his timing. I also wonder if the kickoff rule change that disincentivizes touchbacks has led to more practice time spent on kickoffs — at the expense of field goal repetitions.
But the most likely explanation for Butker’s perceived struggles is a larger sample of his normal regular-season variance. While he has never attempted more than 42 regular-season field goals in any year, Kansas City’s early difficulty in finishing drives has him on pace for 55 tries over 17 games. Butker has already attempted five field goals exceeding 50 yards; he has never tried more than nine in any of his previous eight seasons.
Butker converting only three of five attempts beyond 50 yards may seem concerning, but if he makes his next try, a 4-for-6 mark would match his career 66% accuracy from that distance. If there were a placekicker on the market who offered better than a 60% success rate beyond 50 yards, he would already be signed.
The point-after-touchdown (PAT) misses are frustrating — but entering the season, Butker had missed about six percent of his career PATs. While that number isn’t zero, it is low enough to have confidence in Butker. With one extra point miss occurring on a converted Brazilian soccer field — and the other after a 15-yard penalty — I am not sure it’s time to worry.
I am more concerned about the 40-yarder Butker badly missed during Week 3 in New York — but entering the season, he had actually missed almost 12% of his career kicks from 40–49 yards. While known for clutch postseason heroics, Butker has played through regular-season hiccups before — and has sometimes been only “very good” (rather than legendary) until January. We’re not far enough into the season to truly identify trends, but the best way for Kansas City...
