Cam Little’s 68-yard field goal on Sunday didn’t just win a few halftime cheers — it pushed the boundaries of what’s possible for NFL kickers. The Jacksonville Jaguars rookie drilled the record-breaking kick as time expired in the first half of the team’s overtime win over the Raiders in Las Vegas. Little’s kick broke Justin Tucker’s previous record of 66 yards from 2021.
“You kick it long enough and you kick it straight enough, it’s going to go in,” Little said after the game. “Me and Logan (Cooke) kind of had like a one-on-one right before the kick and I said, ‘I’m going to hit this ball as hard as I can.’ Usually, when I tell myself that, I find success.”
Little’s record-setting kick split the uprights with room to spare and might have been good from 70 yards, a distance he’d already proven possible in the preseason.
“I ran right at him, it was like we had won the Super Bowl,” head coach Liam Coen said. Little’s kick is the latest example of a league-wide trend: Kickers are consistently nailing long field goals, and the record books are starting to show it.
Chasing the 70-yard mark
The 50-yard field goal used to be a spectacle. Now, it’s almost routine. Across the NFL, many kickers’ range comfortably extends beyond 60 yards, and coaches have responded by updating their clock management and field position strategies.
The boom in long field goals has caused some around the league to wonder if something has changed about the footballs used in games. This season, a rule change allowed teams to prepare kicking balls before game day and to practice with the same balls they’ll use in games.
“You know what you guys have missed?” said Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio in a press conference. “These kicking balls that they changed this year have drastically changed the kicking game, field goals in particular.”
He added, “It’s drastically changed the game — the kicking game and the field goal,” comparing the shift to baseball’s evolving power eras and even suggesting that some kicks could deserve an asterisk. “Guys have longer range than they used to,” Fangio said.
Kickers say the more broken-in balls travel only a few yards farther, yet that has been enough to create record-breaking results. Already this season, NFL kickers have converted six field goals of at least 60 yards, breaking the league’s single-season record. In addition to Little’s record-setter, Tampa Bay’s Chase McLaughlin hit a 65-yarder in Week 4, Dallas Brandon Aubrey drilled a 64-yarder in Week 2, and Pittsburgh’s Chris Boswell and Minnesota’s Will Reichard have also connected from beyond 60. Fangio predicted that Aubrey “will eclipse the 70-yard barrier this year.”
Not to mention that Little already hit from 70 in Jacksonville’s preseason opener in August. Since 2020, the number of attempts from beyond 50 yards has steadily risen — and though there has been a slight decline this fall, Weeks 1 and 2 each featured five made kicks of 55 yards or longer, tied for the second-most in a single week since 2000.
NFL kickers hit new heights
Coaches around the league say what’s happening with kickers is no fluke. The players’ legs are stronger, their mechanics are cleaner, and their confidence to attempt from distance has never been higher.
Long-distance field goals have surged along with advances in training methods. The NFL has set records in each of the last four seasons for made field goals from 50 yards or farther, with the total reaching 195 in 2024 — double the number from any season before 2015.
NFL kickers this season have converted 72.5 percent of their attempts from those distances, nearly twice the success rate from three decades ago.
“I am just watching the league and I’m watching the numbers, I know it’s helping,” Carolina Panthers long snapper J.J. Jansen, a 17-year NFL veteran, told The Athletic. “At the same time, all of these kickers are getting so strong that to say ‘now we’re making long field goals only because of the football’ would be silly. I think it’s having some effect on how far you can kick a ball.”
A gradual increase in kickers’ range has been ongoing for two decades, but the spike this season has been especially sharp. Following the rule change allowing teams to practice with the “K ball,” kickers have already made 28 field goals from at least 55 yards — the most ever through five weeks, and greater than the full-season total of any year before 2022.
The making of modern K-Ball rules
This season’s change to the NFL’s kicking-ball protocol didn’t start with kickers chasing records — it began with equipment managers asking for relief. Seven teams — Baltimore, Cleveland, Houston, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Minnesota and Washington — proposed a rule meant to ease game-day strain on staffs.
Before 2025, balls designated for kicking were shipped directly to officials and brought to the stadium on game day. Teams then had just 60 minutes to prepare three “K balls,” using only a wet towel, a dry towel and a specialized brush. Now, they receive 60 pre-stamped “K” footballs before the season and can break them in during the week, selecting three to use for up to three games each.
“You’re trying to break down the seams and you’re trying to round the ball out and then you’re also trying to make it a little bit more tactile ’cause it comes out kind of slippery right out of the box,” Detroit Lions special teams coordinator Dave Fipp told The Athletic.
“You’re supposed to only be able to use this brush that Wilson makes,” Fipp said. “It’s a hard brush and you can use the brush. Now they say you could use any part of the brush, so you could use the backside of the wooden brush. So those guys would take the backside of the brush on the seams, they would take the bristle side of the brush and smooth the ball out … and the rounder and smoother you can get it and the more grippy you can get it, the better for really all three of those guys — snapper, punter, kicker.”
The goal is to make the football feel familiar. Kickers now work with the same balls they’ll use on game day, often 75 to 100 times in practice — a far cry from the “cold” game balls they used to see only minutes before kickoff.
The league first introduced K-ball rules in 1999, after teams were caught microwaving, drying, and even steaming footballs to soften the leather. In 2006, after Tony Romo’s infamous dropped hold in the Dallas Cowboys’ Wild Card round loss to Seattle, the NFL allowed limited game-day prep.
This moment 😬
Tony Romo’s botched snap in the closing moments of the 2006 NFC Wild Card game.
Oh Tony…
🏈: @DallasCowboys vs. @Seahawks
⏰: Sunday, 9:25pm
📺: @SkySportsNFL pic.twitter.com/UDlTJGrwGa— NFL UK & Ireland (@NFLUKIRE) September 24, 2020
The new rule extends that window to the full week — teams can still only use towels and the Wilson brush, but they are not permitted to heat or reshape the ball. For longtime Dallas kicking coach Steve Hoffman, the system is a far cry from the old days.
“We would take the balls and go into the racquetball court with a baseball bat. One guy would toss the ball up in the air and whack, you’d hit it with the bat and you’d just beat them up with the baseball bat,” Hoffman told The Athletic. “Then we would wet them down and put them in the clothes dryer with some damp towels. Then we’d take them out and … get those big spinning disc things the janitors used to polish the floors and turn those upside down. … We would polish them up to make them look like they weren’t too beat up.”
Now, with time and consistency on their side, kicking specialists no longer need the creative methods of old to make the perfect ball — just reps.
Implications of the new balls on performance
For years, kickers had almost no control over the footballs they used. After 1999, NFL officials were the only ones allowed to handle K-balls before games — they came straight out of the box and onto the tee. Even after tweaks in 2008 and 2020, kickers still had limited say over which footballs they’d use on Sundays.
“The challenge that all of these kickers beforehand were having was that we had no say on (which balls were used),” Jansen said. “In some cases the ball guys were just like, ‘the balls are just bad. They’re not breaking in. I did the very best I could (and) I couldn’t break it in.’ Just a bad football, and we (only) got the three the league gave us. … Everyone that is handling a K-ball now at least has had the opportunity to use K-balls (that have been) broken in. It’s just better for everybody.”
Quarterbacks have long had that same advantage — working their game balls throughout the week to find the perfect feel — and kicking specialists say it’s only fair that they’re now allowed to do the same. The rule change hasn’t just produced longer field goals. Punts are booming, too. The league’s average punt distance is now 47.7 yards, a number that would have set a single-season record 20 years ago.
San Francisco 49ers kicker Eddy Pineiro estimates the broken-in footballs add three or four yards to a kick — a meaningful but not game-breaking boost. “It’s normal now to kick a 60-plus-yard field goal,” Pineiro told the Associated Press. “It’s not like, ‘Oh my God. Wow!’ like it used to be. It’s kind of expected. But that’s part of the game. The game’s evolving for the better, and kickers are making more kicks in and farther kicks. If you don’t have a broken-in ball, it’s a lot harder to hit a 60-yard field goal.”
Modern equipment plays a role, too. Today’s synthetic kicking shoes are lighter and don’t stretch like the kangaroo leather models of decades past, offering more consistent support. Combined with refined training techniques and the rise of private kicking coaches, kickers are stronger, more precise, and better prepared than ever.
The combination — better athletes, smarter training, improved equipment, and a more forgiving football — has pushed NFL kickers toward new frontiers. The 70-yard field goal was once a fantasy, and now it’s just the next milestone kick the league is waiting to see.