Steelers' Chris Boswell, other NFL kickers redefine position thanks to long list of factors

When Gary Anderson lined up for a field goal in overtime of a playoff game on New Year’s Eve 1989, eyebrows across Western Pennsylvania were raised.

Though Anderson ultimately would retire as the NFL’s career leader in successful field goals, where Anderson was lining up that day at the Houston Astrodome gave reason for pause.

Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll had sent out Anderson to try a kick from a distance that had an almost-magical and fabled ring attached to it.

Fifty yards.

To football fans of that era, where Anderson lined up on the field might as well have been across the parking lot. Kicks from that distance seemed that rare.

Anderson made that kick, accounting for Noll’s final postseason win and advancing the Steelers to the divisional round.

Fast forward 36 years. The eventual successor to Anderson’s longtime gig as Steelers kicker, Chris Boswell, lined up for a go-ahead boot in the regular-season opener.

From 60 yards.

“We knew he was going to make it,” long snapper Christian Kuntz said.

So did most of those watching.

Whereas 50-yard kicks used to be special, nowadays kickers who miss a handful of those over the course of a season are sweating out getting cut.

In 1989, there were only 21 made field goals of 50 or more yards throughout the regular season. (Anderson didn’t even attempt one).

Over the first week-plus (17 games) of this NFL regular season, there have been 16 such kicks from 50-plus yards.

Whereas Anderson had only 12 makes of 50 or more yards over his 23-season pro career, Boswell had 13 in 2024 alone. And he didn’t even lead the league. Dallas’ Brandon Aubrey (14) did.

“The game gets better over time,” said the man who holds for Boswell’s kicks, Steelers punter Corliss Waitman. “People run faster, and they just get more athletic. Back in the day, (a 60-yard placekick) was unreal. Now, it’s almost like, ‘OK, well that’s cool.’

“But it’s still very impressive. I don’t want people to overlook how hard it is to do. People just make it look easy, but it’s not.”

For the world’s elite at the skill, though, such monster boots are increasingly becoming much less difficult.

And it’s not just a phenomenon that needs to be measured back to the 1980s. The past decade has been a major renaissance in field-goal kicking accuracy and distance. That’s true across all levels of football but most apparently so in the NFL.

The Steelers’ Miles Killebrew is in his 10th pro season as one of the league’s best special teams players. He was born three years after Anderson’s kick, but he has seen a marked change even since he was drafted in 2016.

“It’s crazy. I mean, when I first got in the league, it was like you were kicking around 50 yards, it was like, ‘Man, that’s a marvel,’ ” Killebrew said this week.

“The kicking in this game has been phenomenal to see these kickers just lock in and hit these distances that were unheard of just a few years back.”

NFL kickers in 2016 combined to make 85 field goals of at least 50 yards. They attempted 150 for a 56.7% success rate.

While that dwarfs the data from 1989 (only 61 were attempted and 21 made, or 34.4%), check out what kickers did over the most recent full season.

Last year, coaches trotted out kickers for an attempt of at least 50 yards an eye-popping 279 times. They collectively made that decision pay off for 195 of those, just shy of 70% of the time.

Longtime NFL special-teams coach Danny Smith credits a variety of factors for the rapidly increased range.

“The kickers are much more precise. They really are,” said Smith, who’s in his 13th season with the Steelers. “They’re perfectionists at their craft. Give credit to all the kickers. They’ve improved immensely in their craft. And I think weight programs and leg strength have improved in their body. I also think the balls have a little bit to do with it.”

The manufacturing specs of footballs have improved their reliability and consistency overall. Also, several years ago the NFL set aside special “K” balls for kicking plays (punts and kickoffs included) that might not be as compromised if they had been scuffed or manhandled over plays from scrimmage.

New for this season, additionally, specialists are given an allotment of the “K” balls before the season begins so they can “break them in.” The consensus across the industry is that this will increase the distance and accuracy of kicks.

But that doesn’t explain the massive gains in each that were made over the decade until 2024. In regards to the distances now being eclipsed, Boswell believes the explanation is a simple one.

“It’s just more opportunities,” he said, noting that coach Mike Tomlin now has a more heightened trust to deploy him from long range than he did when Boswell was a younger kicker. “I was able to capitalize on those (opportunities), and they just keep coming back up.”

Proof of Boswell’s hypothesis: over 87 games in his first six NFL seasons, Tomlin asked him to try only 12 field goals of 50-plus yards. In his past 64 games over the four-plus seasons since, Boswell has been tabbed to attempt 42 field goals that long.

The man they call “The Kick Doctor” — longtime kicking coach Paul Assad — buys into that theory, too.

“At the pro level, it’s now like we expect them to hit those (extra long) kicks,” said Assad, who has served as personal coach for dozens of NFL kickers over recent decades. “I was thinking about the difference (these days), because I’ve had guys over the years that could demolish the ball. They just were not given the same kind of opportunity (to hit them during games).”

Assad notes several other factors, many of them related to field conditions being much better these days. Many more football stadiums (across all levels) have field turf, and the ones that are natural grass now are much better taken care of. Muddy conditions common a few decades back rarely happen anymore.

The increase in domes eliminates wind, rain or snow for more kickers. Smith notes that improvements in the consistency of what he calls “the operation” of a kick (including the snap and hold) have made great strides.

The propensity of specialized coaches (such as Assad) and modern techniques have aided in this kicking renaissance, too. Technological advancements have been made in video analysis and science: Athletes now know (or are told) precisely what muscles to strengthen (and how) and what types of movements achieve maximum efficiency in the skill of kicking an oblong piece of leather as far as .04 of a mile between two upright posts 18 feet, inches apart and 10 feet off the ground.

“The technology that’s available now can measure right down to the joint as far as the kinetics and kinematics of a certain movement,” said Kevin Conley, the chair of the Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh. “That’s no doubt going to impact the ability to kick a ball further for any kicker exposed to it.”

Conley, who is also a professor and associate dean for Pitt’s school of health and rehabilitation sciences, worked directly for the Pitt football team during the 1990s.

“And I vividly recall being on the sidelines back then,” Conley said this week, “and now I go down on the sidelines today, and this is like a completely different planet. I mean, the punters are like 6-5, 6-6, many of them.”

That applies to all positions of all sports, of course. But for a skill subset such as kicking, the boundaries are directly expanding.

“It’s better training, it’s better nutrition,” Conley said. “The strength and conditioning programs have evolved, particularly at the professional level. You’ve got athletes who’ve got their own personal trainer now. And so all the training they do is very precision-oriented toward their specific vocation on the team.”