Analysis: Any way you slice it, Stephen Gostkowski looking for more consistency

Going into this weekend’s action, Stephen Gostkowski is one of three kickers in the league who has made at least 85 percent of his field goal tries and 95 percent of his extra points (minimum 25 attempts). In addition, he’s second in the league in scoring (91 points), and has the longest field-goal in the AFC this season at 58 yards.

“He’s as clean a kicker as anybody I’ve ever been around,” said Jamie Kohl, who runs Kohl’s Football Kicking and Punting Camps and has watched Gostkowski closely for a number of seasons. “My younger guys, sometimes they have practices with the Patriots — I know they’ve had joint workouts with the Saints and Eagles and some other teams — and I’ve told them you need to reach out to this guy, because he’s been in a lot of battles over the years, a lot of tough conditions and tough encounters, and he’s come out ahead.

"For a while, he was the best kicker in football. Now, Justin Tucker has a pretty strong claim to that title. But Stephen has had a tremendous career, and been very successful. I admire his overall body of work and his consistency. I do feel he’s still very, very good player and still one of top kickers in the league, regardless of stats.

“Let me put it to you this way — I think most NFL teams would trade their kicker for him.”

Issues have been to the right

Despite that, inconsistencies continue to affect the veteran. Gostkowski, who loves to golf, has been guilty of some ugly slices lately: since the beginning of the 2016 season, of his 13 total misses (extra points and field goals combined), 10 of them have either been wide right or hit the right upright and bounced no good.

“I try not to get too high or too low. When things are going good, you just keep trying to replicate that,” Gostkowski said this week when asked about his approach, one we’ve discussed with him on multiple occasions this season. (Check here and here for our previous conversations.)

“With weather and conditions and close games, it’s always a challenge,” Gostkowski added. “But the goal is to get better, or at least maintain the swing and be able to make adjustments when you struggle. Try and get it right every single time. That’s what you work for, and that’s what I’ve always worked for for the last 12-plus years.”

Overall, he’s been off the mark on one extra point and three field-goal attempts this year. But given the standard of excellence he’s set in his decade-plus run in New England (and the fact that he remains the highest-paid kicker in the league), the misses always spark palpitations among Patriots’ fans.

Recently, Gostkowski missed a pair of field goals in the win over the Chargers, and while he’s always been good with the media when it comes to talking about his performance, was reticent to get into a discussion about specific technique. But he acknowledged there were issues.

“You obviously try and limit the movement that kicks have coming off your foot, but a lot of that depends on a lot of different things. There are conditions and weather and things like that,” Gostkowski said. “I know the one I missed against the Chargers moved to the right moved a bit. But the goal is to always hit a straight ball. You always have to take the wind into account, and hope that wherever you’re hitting it, it takes it through. If you miss, you have to move on and go to the next kick and try and hit that one as straight as possible. But it’s a week-to-week thing.”

Tempo has slowed of late

Chuck Zodda, a former college kicker who writes about kicking for Inside the Pylon, noticed a few things about Gostkowski and his performance that he hadn’t seen before, specifically when it came to technique and tempo.

“A kicker is similar to a golfer in that there are trying to get their swing on a consistent plane, and last year, it looked like Gostkowski’s swing plane was flattening a bit,” Zodda explained, saying it was like when a pitchers’ front shoulder flies open prematurely and the ball sails high and outside.

“He was pushing the ball. The misses you see this year, there’s a flattening of the swing plane,” he said. “That was something that was present for the first six or seven weeks of last year, where he was pushing the ball. He cleaned it up down the stretch, but I’m seeing it now on his misses this year. It’s sort of like when a pitchers’ front shoulder flies open on his delivery and the ball goes high and outside.

“One other thing I’ve seen this year is that he’s working at a different tempo this year. I’m not sure if that’s by design or what, but he’s a bit slower,” he added. “I went back and watched the tape from 2015, and from the start of his motion to where he made contact, he was between .85 and .9 seconds. This year, he’s closer to one full second. He might be doing it deliberately to slow things down and clean up any mechanical issues. I’m not sure. But there’s a much more deliberate style this year than what we have seen in year’s past.”

Zodda pointed to the Giants’ game in 2015 when Gostkowski nailed a 53-yarder with one second to lift the Patriots as the recent zenith of his career.



“If you go back and watch his 53-yarder to beat the Giants where he was just nails, he follows through perfectly and everything comes through cleanly. If you watch the first miss from the Chargers game, he doesn’t have the same pop coming out of his kick that he had and the same follow through. I’m not sure why.”

In the case of both of his misses against the Chargers, the ball seemed to wobble excessively while coming off his foot, moreso than in most of his field-goal attempts. The 43-yarder that was missed wide right in the third quarter looked to be a combination of a sudden gust of wind (at least it looked like that might have been the case by the flags on top of the goal posts), as well as a bit of a mis-hit that ended taking it right.



In contrast, the 43-yarder he made in the third quarter in the same game against the Chargers, one of four he made on the day? Straight down the middle, a clean kick that would have been good from 53 yards out.



It’s worth mentioning that whatever issues he had against Los Angeles were apparently ironed out, as he went 5-for-5 on extra points and 2-for-2 on field-goal attempts in last weekend’s win over the Broncos in Denver. Kicking well in Colorado is big for Gostkowski, especially in the wake of his infamous missed extra-point in the 2015 AFC title game against the Broncos.

Despite his recent success in Denver, going forward, he knows he’ll face a challenge over the rest of the second half. Pittsburgh has always been a notoriously tough place for any kicker because of the conditions and poor turf. And the winds in Buffalo are difficult for anyone to handle. Zodda is confident Gostkowski will be able to fix whatever ails him. After all, he did it last year.

“It’s a benefit to me to be able to kick outside for practice,” Gostkowski said. “Every day, the wind moves the ball so much more than any other place. In my experience, it’s usually harder in practice than it is in the game.

“In certain stadiums, it can suck. Buffalo is a tough place to kick,” he added. “But having kicked in Gillette for a long time, you have an idea as to what’s going to happen. I mean, once in a blue moon, a storm will blow through and the wind will be in a slightly different direction and inconsistent. But if you play in enough windy stadiums, you don’t worry about it as much.”

Short kickoffs have been a boon to team

One of the stranger things about the issues he’s had when it comes to field goals and extra points is the fact that it contrasts so starkly with what he’s doing when it comes to kickoffs. Going into last weekend, the Patriots were tops in the league when it came to the total percentage of kickoffs returned, a tribute to Gostkowski’s work as a pop-up artist whose talent for making sure the ball lands inside the 20 is so key to winning the battle of field position.

“It’s been very, very fun to be able to do that this year. I take a lot of pride on putting guys in position to make a play when it comes to kickoffs, and it’s worked,” he said. “I mean, it’s cool to bang it away and get touchbacks, like some sort of long drive competition. Especially if you have a dynamic returner back there. But to be able to give our guys five extra yards with a good kick, that’s a great feeling. With the good, athletic guys we have on our kick coverage team, its fun to see them demolish a returner inside the 25.

“I mean, it’s not a secret. We’re not really banging the ball into the end zone. It’s been a fun experience, and it’s really helped out when it comes to field position. If our fast guys are crossing the 30 before they can touch the ball, you know you have a good kick. That’s a little trick to watch for. I mean, if you hit the ball to the goal line in two seconds, and our team is hardly past the 40, that’s not going to work. Our guys are trying to make big plays, and I’m trying to help them.”

Ultimately, that’s one of the reasons why, despite any issues he might have had with field goals and extra points, the Patriots have not presented a challenger to Gostkowski in a long time. Whether it’s been working out a free-agent replacement or signing an undrafted free agent in the summer, he appears to have the full faith of the coaching staff. Time will tell if that faith will pay dividends down the road.