A couple of years ago, I asked New England Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski what he was doing to improve his clutch kicking game.
He looked at me with a 1,000-yard death stare and gave me the normal ‘Patriot Way’ answer.
He looked over to the tunnel, frustrated, and asked me if we were good wanting the interview to be over. I told him the answer he wanted and we did not meet again for another two years.
Gostkowski has not been without his woes in the second half of this decade. In the 2015 AFC Championship against the Denver Broncos, the Memphis alum shanked an extra point which proved costly at the end of the game.
He then notably missed an extra point in the 2017 Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles which did not help either.
In 2018, Gostkowski’s field goal percentage dropped nearly 10 percent from the year before. Having made 37-of-40 field goals in 2017 (92.5 percent), Gostkowski only connected on 27 of 32 last season (84.4 percent).
Now fast forward to this season and the Patriots’ all-time leading scorer has missed three PAT attempts this season. Tied for a career-high with 2016 for extra point misses, not even a quarter of the way through the season.
Though he is amongst the most accurate kickers in league history, one cannot help but notice a trend here.
Gostkowski still puts up solid numbers and exhibits great accuracy when kicking field goals. This year, he has gone 6-of-7 at a position that has become the brunt of jokes throughout the league with laughable inconsistency.
But what happened with Gostkowski and the extra point? From his rookie season to 2015, Gostkowski went a near-flawless 502-of-503 on his extra-point attempts.
His decline in extra points stems from a rule change in 2016 moving the extra point attempt from the two-yard line to the 15-yard line. A 13-yard difference that has given Gostkowski fits.
Ever since the permanent alteration of the extra point distance, Gostkowski has gone 150-159 on extra points including the aforementioned misses in the postseason and Super Bowls.
While it is not the worst stat line a kicker could have for extra points, it has given Patriots fans a little more uneasiness when Gostkowski trots out for the PAT.
In a league with teams that would kill for a great kicker, Gostkowski is still a dime in dozen. But is he the automatic kicking machine he used to be? Absolutely not.
So think before you get up to get that next soda or another slice of pizza –– skipping out on watching his point after. Because that precious point is not as much a given as it once was.
One Response
I have lost all confidence in him all the team hard work they do each game and to be lost by a missed field goal or extra point unexceptionable.