This past offseason, the New England Patriots made Stephen Gostkowski the highest paid kicker in the NFL with a four-year, $17.2 million extension. Gostkowski is giving the Patriots a healthy return on investment as the best kicker in the league at the three-quarter pole of the season.
He is one of seven kickers with at least 20 attempts who have yet to miss an extra point this season. Of that bunch, Gostkowski has 15 more attempts (43) than anyone else, with Green Bay's Mason Crosby coming in second with 28 tries. Gostkowski has also missed just one field goal all season, a 54-yarder in Week 11 against Buffalo. His 96 percent connect rate is second only to Detroit's Matt Prater who is a perfect 17-for-17 on field goals.
On the other side of the spectrum, there have been 58 missed extra points through 12 games this season. Last year, there were eight misses the entire season. There were 18 misses alone in the first quarter of the season, a number that dropped to 13 over the next four games.
Not surprisingly with the weather getting worse, that number more than doubled to 27 over the last quarter, although six were blocked, equaling the amount of blocked PATs from the first two quarters of the season.
Here are 10 other interesting factoids regarding the kicking game this season: (data courtesy of Pro Football Reference)
93.7: Success rate of all extra points this season.
90.8: Success rate on extra points the last quarter.
98.97: Success rate of extra points the previous 10 seasons.
13: Biggest dropoff in success rate from last season to this season (Blair Walsh 100 to 87).
9: Increase in Walsh's field goal success rate from last season to this season (74 to 83).
4: Number of kickers who have better success rates on field goals than extra points (Prater, Jason Myers, Phil Dawson, Steven Hauschka).
6: Number of extra points missed by Myers.
3: Number of extra points missed by Myers, Hauschka and Buffalo's Dan Carpenter. (Two of Hauschka's were blocked).
0: Number of extra points missed by Mason Crosby this season (28 attempts).
2: Number of extra points missed by Mason Crosby last season (55 attempts-both blocked).
