Jason Hanson was a unicorn.
The Detroit Lions took Hanson in the second round of the 1992 NFL draft, and Hanson went on to have an illustrious 21-year career with the team. He made two Pro Bowls, he was inducted into the Lions’ ring of honor in 2013, and he holds the NFL record for most games played with a single team.
But as the Lions prepare to perhaps draft a kicker for just the third time in 31 years, Hanson’s career is a stark reminder of just how tricky evaluating the position can be.
While the Lions struck gold with Hanson in 1992, they missed badly on their last draft pick at the position, Nate Freese in 2014, and most NFL teams who’ve taken kickers in the eight drafts since Freese bombed as a seventh-round pick have fared little better with their selections.
“I do think in order to draft a kicker that you got to feel like, ‘Hey, man, this guy’s going to be a good player for us,’” Lions special teams coordinator Dave Fipp said. “And I think it’s probably fairly well documented that in the past there have been — (Sebastian) Janikowski, maybe he worked out (as a first-round pick), but in the past there have been some mistakes where they’ve taken some guys earlier in the draft and those guys didn’t work out. And I do think that the kicker position’s much like a lot of them where it’s hit and miss. You don’t know exactly which one’s going to be a guy who ends up playing great in this league and having a great career in this league, so it’s not always the guy you thought was the best going into the draft or coming out of the draft that year.”
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Just four of the 13 kickers drafted since Freese went 229th overall remain with the team that drafted them. Three of those four were drafted since 2020 (Cade York, Evan McPherson and Tyler Bass), and none of the other nine found much success with their original team.
That group includes two Pro Bowl kickers, Jake Elliott and Matt Gay, who’ve played with a total of five different teams in their 10 combined NFL seasons; All-Pro Las Vegas Raiders kicker Daniel Carlson, who made 1 of 4 field goals before being cut from his first job with the Minnesota Vikings; and two kickers (Austin Seibert and Zane Gonzalez) who’ve had unsuccessful stints with the Lions in recent years.
Seibert made 13 of 17 field goals in parts of two seasons with the Lions, both of which were cut short by injury. Gonzalez never kicked in a game for the Lions, but is one of 10 kickers the team has employed since 2021.
The Lions re-signed Michael Badgley to a one-year deal after he made 20 of 24 field goals in 12 games last season, but are expected to add another kicker in the coming weeks, either through the draft or as a rookie free agent.
“The one thing I do think with the kicker position in general, and I’ve kind of struggled to put this into a better picture for you guys, or for myself or for the organization or whoever, but I really do feel like when you look at the 32 kickers in the league, there’s a huge chunk of them that are in this middle tier,” Fipp said. “They have good years and they have bad years, and it’s like, one year’s better than the other. Well, when you kick 25 kicks, if you make three more or three less, it’s a huge difference statistically percentage-wise.”
Because so many kickers fall into that middle tier, teams don’t often draft kickers and sometimes exercise little patience with the ones they do select — occasionally to their detriment.
Carlson, a fifth-round pick by the Vikings in 2018, was waived after missing three kicks in his second NFL game, a 29-29 tie with the Green Bay Packers. He signed with the Raiders a month later and has made nearly 90% of his field goals in the four-plus seasons since, including 24 of 29 kicks of 50-plus yards.
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Gay and Elliott, the only Pro Bowl kickers drafted in the past 10 years — both were selected in 2021, when Elliott went a replacement for Gay, who was in the Super Bowl — had similar journeys.
Gay, a fifth-round pick by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2019, had a rough rookie season in which he missed eight field goals and five extra points and spent part of the 2020 season on the Indianapolis Colts practice squad before finding success with the Los Angeles Rams. Gay re-signed with the Colts as a free agent this offseason.
Elliott, a fifth-round pick by the Cincinnati Bengals in 2017, was cut at the end of training camp and spent a few weeks on Cincinnati’s practice squad before Fipp encouraged the Philadelphia Eagles to sign him that fall.
“The Bengals had drafted him and they put him on their practice squad, ironically to keep (another ex-Lion) Randy Bullock,” Fipp said. “He was my top kicker coming out of that draft process that year, and he was a young, talented player and I thought he had a chance to be a good player and it kind of worked out for him.”
Fipp said kicking in the NFL, in some ways, is easier than college. The snappers and holders are better. The hash marks are tighter, so kicks are straighter. And each kick is “closer to the same as the last one no matter what distance you’re kicking from.”
For that reason, Fipp said he values college success as “a great indicator on a guy’s future success” in the NFL, and this year’s draft includes several decorated kickers among its top prospects.
Michigan’s Jake Moody won the Lou Groza Award as the nation’s top kicker in 2021, and North Carolina State’s Christopher Dunn took the award last season. Moody made 69 of 84 field goals (82.1%) in five seasons at Michigan, including better than 82% each of the past two years. Dunn made 85% of his kicks in college, including 28 of 29 last season.
Maryland’s Chad Ryland, another of this year’s top kickers, was 16 of 20 on field goal attempts (80%) last season after making 56 of 74 kicks (75.7%) at Eastern Michigan.
Ultimately, whether the Lions decide to use a draft pick on a kicker or not is up to general manager Brad Holmes. Fipp said there are merits to going young and with experience at the position, and ultimately it’s important for teams to be patient with their kicker and realize they won’t make 100% of their tries.
“That position’s like a lot of positions in this game,” Fipp said. “The bottom line is there’s a bunch of different ways to get it through the uprights and as long as you have yours and your consistent at it and really good, then it all works out.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.