The Long View

The Missed Long Field Goal Is a Hidden Gift

Miss from 50-plus and the other team takes over right where the kick was snapped, near midfield. Counted properly, that miss costs about two full points versus simply punting.

When a 58-yard try sails wide, the broadcast has a script: you take those chances, no harm in trying, good process. The rulebook disagrees. On a missed field goal the defense takes over at the spot of the kick, seven yards behind the line of scrimmage, which for a long try means handing the other team the ball around its own 40. A punt from that same spot typically pins them somewhere between the 10 and the 20.

That first row is the quiet one nobody prices on the broadcast. Compare every punt snapped from long field goal range with every missed 50-plus try from the same band of field position, and the punt comes out ahead by about 2.2 expected points, a gap that has landed between +1.7 and +2.5 in every season since 1999. The three points are real when the kick goes through. The miss is a genuine gift, roughly two points of it, delivered directly to the opponent.

The made kick is worth three. The miss hands back about two. A 50-plus yard try is a real risk with a real cost on the table.

This does not mean never kick

The full decision includes the branch where the kick goes in, and kickers have never been better: makes from 50-plus have gone from about a coin flip in the early 2000s to roughly two thirds today. Sometimes the try is right. But it is still a risk, and the cost is larger than it looks, because part of the measured cost is the scoring chance the offense spent the down on and part is the field position it handed over. Missed 50-plus tries per season have roughly doubled since 1999 as coaches have learned to trust the leg, so this particular gift is being exchanged more often than ever.

The same mistake, one zip code over

Punters make a version of the same error, and the gross yardage leaderboard actively rewards it. A touchback resets the ball to the 20 no matter how far the punt flew, so from midfield every yard past the goal line is wasted. Touchback punts from the midfield band average 49.8 gross yards but net only about 30 once the ball comes back out, giving back roughly 20 yards of the kick.

Meanwhile the punts from the same band that stay out of the end zone, downed, fair caught, or angled out of bounds, have beaten the touchback punts by between a third and two thirds of a point of expected scoring per punt in every season since 1999. Because both groups are measured from the same snap positions, this is not an artifact of where the punts were launched from. Once you cross your own 40, placement beats raw distance, every year, without exception.

How to watch for it

Next time your team misses from 55, do not watch the kicker's reaction. Watch where the other offense lines up for its first snap, and remember that a punt would have moved that huddle back 30 yards. And when your punter drops one dead at the 8 instead of booming it through the end zone, that unglamorous kick was worth about half a point. The hidden yards in the kicking game are hidden only because nobody on television does this arithmetic out loud.