Alright, so, I’ve been digging into this whole thing about whether an NFL kicker has ever had a perfect season. It’s a pretty wild ride, let me tell you.
First off, I started where anyone would – just hitting up the search engines. I typed in “has an NFL kicker ever had a perfect season?” and started reading.
I found out some kickers have gotten close. This guy, Gary Anderson, played for like 23 seasons, and he once had a perfect season for point-after touchdown conversions. But that’s not exactly what I was looking for, you know? I wanted to know about field goals, the whole shebang.
Then there was this photo of Phil Dawson, who played until he was 44. But it didn’t really answer my question either. It just made me think about how long some of these guys play.
I stumbled upon some stats that said only one kicker in history had a perfect season, and that’s Stephen Gostkowski with the Patriots back in 2014. But did that include both field goals and extra points? It didn’t really say, and it left me hanging.
Diving deeper, I came across this Adam Vinatieri guy, also from the Patriots. No perfect season, but still, the name popped up a lot.
Digging Through Stats
Then, I hit the motherlode – a site called Pro-Football-Reference. I found this table of single-season leaders in field goal percentages. Gary Anderson’s name was at the top for 1998 with 100%, but there was a catch – this was just for the regular season. It didn’t include playoffs.
- Justin Tucker, 97.436% in 2016
- Robbie Gould, 97.059% in 2018
- Aldrick Rosas, 96.970% in 2018
These were the closest, but not quite perfect for the entire season including playoffs.
I learned that Justin Tucker has the best career field goal percentage. The dude’s a legend. But again, that wasn’t about having a perfect season.
Then, there was this stat about Tom Brady having the most wins against a single opponent. Not really related, but hey, it’s Tom Brady, so it caught my eye.
The Real Deal
I finally found something interesting about a kicker named Mike Vanderjagt. In 2003, he didn’t miss a single field goal or point-after attempt the whole season, including playoffs! But here’s the kicker – Gary Anderson had done the same in the regular season back in 1998, but he missed one in the playoffs.
I also read that Justin Tucker, who was known as the most accurate, had a bit of a rough patch in 2024, and now Eddy Pineiro is slightly ahead in career field goal percentage. Things change fast in the NFL, huh?
Wrapping It Up
So, after all this digging, it looks like no one’s really had a truly perfect season, if you count both the regular season and playoffs and consider both field goals and extra points. Some have come darn close, but there’s always that one miss that spoils the perfect record. It’s a tough job, and it just goes to show how hard it is to be absolutely perfect in the NFL.
And that’s where I landed. It was a fun search, and I learned a lot. I thought I knew about football, but this opened my eyes. It’s all about the details. This journey was kind of interesting, I’m happy to share what I found with you guys.
