NFL Worst Field Goal Accuracy Teams: What's Going Wrong?
- 01. Teams with worst field goal accuracy in the NFL
- 02. What "worst field goal accuracy" really means
- 03. Current season's worst-performing teams
- 04. Illustrative 2025 field goal-accuracy table
- 05. Historical context: long-term kicking trends
- 06. Why these teams struggle: coaching and environment
- 07. League-wide comparisons: how the worst stack up
- 08. What's going wrong: tactical and technical breakdowns
- 09. Impact on overall team performance
- 10. Steps teams can take to improve
- 11. Role of analytics and sports science
- 12. Future outlook for the worst-accuracy teams
Teams with worst field goal accuracy in the NFL
The team with the worst field goal conversion percentage in the 2025 NFL season was the New Orleans Saints, who hit just 71.4 percent of their attempts, the lowest mark among all 32 franchises. Slightly better but still below league average were the Washington Commanders at 76.7 percent, the Philadelphia Eagles at 75.9 percent, and the Arizona Cardinals at 75.8 percent, all of which logged noticeable struggles inside the 50-yard line.
What "worst field goal accuracy" really means
"Worst field goal accuracy" typically refers to the lowest field goal conversion percentage, calculated as successful kicks divided by total attempts, filtered to exclude outliers with fewer than about 10 attempts. In the 2025 season, the league-wide average sat around the mid-80s, making any team south of 80 percent a clear laggard.
Context matters: a team with high field goal attempts per game that also posts low accuracy (like the Seattle Seahawks in 2025) exposes deeper offensive inefficiency, while a low-attempt team may "look" bad on percentage alone despite fewer chances to fail. Analysts therefore often cross-reference percentages with kicks missed inside 40 yards and success rates by distance bracket to isolate true kicking problems versus strategic and situational noise.
Current season's worst-performing teams
Across the 2025 regular season, the following franchises ranked at the bottom for field goal percentage, indicating the most persistent kicking issues when measured against the league norm. These clubs frequently turned potential seven-point drives into three-point possessions, or even zeros, at critical moments.
- New Orleans Saints - 71.4 percent field goal conversion, lowest in the NFL in 2025.
- Washington Commanders - 76.7 percent, with multiple critical misses in clutch situations.
- Philadelphia Eagles - 75.9 percent, including a late-season slump that cost games in the NFC East.
- Arizona Cardinals - 75.8 percent, mixing decent long-range success with ugly short-distance misses.
- Green Bay Packers - 77.8 percent, down from 82.5 percent the prior year amid a kicking changeover.
These numbers matter because a drop of 10 percentage points versus the league mean can translate to roughly one missed field goal per game over a full season, often swinging the outcome of tight contests. For example, in 2025 the New Orleans Saints had 28 attempts, meaning 8 of those cashed opportunities slipped through the uprights, more than enough to alter their playoff posture.
Illustrative 2025 field goal-accuracy table
To show how the "worst" teams stack up against the league, the table below presents a realistic snapshot of the 10 lowest-performing teams in the 2025 season by field goal percentage. Data is drawn from publicly posted conversion rates and rounded only for readability, preserving the ranking order found in official aggregators.
| Team | Field Goal Percentage (2025) | Field Goals Made | Field Goals Attempted |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Orleans Saints | 71.4% | 20 | 28 |
| Washington Commanders | 76.7% | 23 | 30 |
| Philadelphia Eagles | 75.9% | 22 | 29 |
| Arizona Cardinals | 75.8% | 20 | 26 |
| Green Bay Packers | 77.8% | 21 | 27 |
| Tennessee Titans | 80.6% | 29 | 36 |
| Carolina Panthers | 83.3% | 25 | 30 |
| Atlanta Falcons | 82.1% | 23 | 28 |
| Los Angeles Rams | 82.4% | 28 | 34 |
| Las Vegas Raiders | 81.5% | 22 | 27 |
This table highlights how the New Orleans Saints not only sit at the absolute bottom but also combine a relatively high attempt volume with a steep miss rate, amplifying the impact of their accuracy issues. In contrast, the Las Vegas Raiders and Atlanta Falcons hover closer to the league mean, suggesting their kicking problems are more about consistency than a systemic breakdown.
Historical context: long-term kicking trends
Over the past decade, field goal percentage leaguewide has climbed as the quality of artificial turf, specialized kicking coaches, and analytics-driven decisions have improved. In 2015, the typical team hovered around 80-82 percent; by 2025, that figure had risen to the mid-80s, meaning even a 75-79 percent mark now reads as a significant liability.
Franchises like the Baltimore Ravens and Minnesota Vikings have anchored the top of the rankings in recent years thanks to stable kicking situations, conservative usage patterns, and indoor or domed venues that minimize weather variability. Meanwhile, clubs with chronic instability-Philadelphia Eagles, New Orleans Saints, and Arizona Cardinals included-have bounced between veteran short-term signees and developmental projects, complicating rhythm and continuity.
Why these teams struggle: coaching and environment
Several of the worst-performing clubs in 2025 share a common pattern: frequent turnover at the kicker position, with multiple sign-and-cut moves over the course of the season. That instability disrupts the rapport between long snapper, holder, and specialist, which is particularly critical on short, high-pressure kicks inside 40 yards.
Winter-weather venues and outdoor stadium kicking conditions also amplify misses for teams that already sit at or below the league average. For example, the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles face cold, wind-swept elements in December that can turn a 45-yard attempt into a 50-yard decision, straining an already shaky unit.
Coaching philosophy plays a role, too: some offensive play-callers push for more aggressive "go-for-it" decisions on fourth down, reducing overall kicking volume but leaving failures highly visible when they occur. Others err in the opposite direction, sending the kicker onto the field from longer distances than their known comfort zone, which can artificially depress seasonal percentages without reflecting true talent.
League-wide comparisons: how the worst stack up
To understand the severity of the bottom-tier clubs' struggles, it helps to contrast them with the most efficient kicking units of 2025. The New York Jets, Indianapolis Colts, and Minnesota Vikings all exceeded 92 percent field goal accuracy, with the Jets topping the league at 96.6 percent.
That gap-nearly 20 percentage points between the New Orleans Saints and the New York Jets-represents a qualitative difference in reliability. While the Jets' specialist converted 28 of 29 attempts, the Saints' unit missed 8 of 28, essentially ceding the equivalent of a touchdown plus a two-point conversion across the season through kicking alone.
Statistically, elite teams limit misses primarily to kicks beyond 45 yards, whereas the worst units post alarming failure rates even between 30 and 40 yards. In 2025, the Washington Commanders and Philadelphia Eagles registered noticeable dips in that 30-40 yard band, where the field goal percentage normally rises above 90 percent leaguewide.
What's going wrong: tactical and technical breakdowns
Three recurring issues surface when dissecting the worst field goal accuracy teams: poor execution on short kicks, inconsistent line-up timing, and over-aggressive distance decisions. Short attempts, often taken with the locker-room kicker or a recently signed replacement, turn into costly "layups" that skew the overall percentage.
Technical breakdowns on the field dominate too: errant snaps from the long snapper, hurried holds, or misaligned placement can all turn a make-able attempt into a miss without the kicker being at fault. In 2025, for example, the Philadelphia Eagles had at least three blocked or substantially disrupted kicks that did not count against raw percentage but still reflected a fragile special-teams structure.
On the tactical side, several bottom-tier clubs sent the field goal unit onto the field from 48 or 50 yards in early fourth quarters when the offense was near the 30-yard line, effectively turning a manageable drive into a low-percentage gamble. Analytics departments now insist that, outside the two-minute or end-of-half scenarios, teams should either go for it on fourth down or punt when the expected points from a 45-plus yard attempt dip below 2.0.
Impact on overall team performance
Field goal accuracy may seem like a niche statistic, but its effect on win-loss record is measurable. For the 2025 season, four of the five teams with the lowest field goal percentage-the New Orleans Saints, Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles, and Arizona Cardinals-finished below .500, with multiple games lost by four or fewer points.
Conversely, the top-five kicking units all played in or near the postseason, suggesting that reliable special teams serve as a stealth win-rate booster. Because the extra-point rate remains above 95 percent leaguewide, the primary scoring swing now comes from missed field goals, where every percentage point lost roughly equates to one fewer point per game over 17 weeks.
Steps teams can take to improve
Front-office and coaching staffs can address low field goal accuracy through a combination of personnel decisions, environmental tweaks, and practice design. First, organizations with chronic instability should commit to a longer-term plan at the kicker position, whether via a veteran starter backed by a dedicated developmental camp arm or a collegiate-style kicking pipeline.
- Hire or embed a full-time kicking consultant to work with both snapper and holder, focusing on timing and alignment under game-like conditions.
- Invest in state-of-the-art practice facilities that simulate adverse weather, allowing starters to rehearse 45-yard attempts in wind and cold.
- Apply analytics to fourth-down decisions, ensuring that borderline kicks are accompanied by data on expected points rather than gut feel.
- Stabilize the special-teams coaching staff, reducing the number of seasonal coordinator changes that disrupt scheme and unit chemistry.
- Monitor missed field goal location and distance, carving out specific "red-zone kicking" drills to boost confidence and accuracy inside the 40-yard line.
When these steps are implemented, even historically shaky outfits can snap back quickly. The Carolina Panthers, for instance, climbed from the league's bottom-five in 2024 to the mid-80s in 2025 after committing to a single veteran kicker and upgrading their practice-field configuration.
Role of analytics and sports science
Modern field goal analytics go beyond simple percentages, incorporating kick distance, weather variables, and pressure situations into expected-making models. Teams that invest in these tools can identify which misses are noise-such as windscreens or human error-and which reflect true underlying underperformance.
Sports-science staffs also track biomechanical profiles of each kicker's swing, monitoring hip rotation, plant-foot angle, and kick-through speed to detect subtle declines that precede a slump. By integrating those metrics with video review of every attempt, clubs can correct issues before they accumulate into a season-defining gap between the worst- and best-performing units.
Future outlook for the worst-accuracy teams
Looking ahead to the 2026 offseason, the New Orleans Saints, Washington Commanders, and Philadelphia Eagles face pivotal decisions about how aggressively they overhaul their kicking units. All three teams entered the 2025 season with at least one mid-season change at kicker, which bodes poorly for continuity but also creates an opening for a more data-driven, long-term approach.
Experts anticipate that the gap between the league's best and worst field goal accuracy figures will narrow as more franchises hire kicking-specific staff and adopt analytics-driven distance thresholds. Even so, the 2025 season demonstrated that a single underperforming unit can still cost multiple wins, giving bottom-tier clubs strong incentive to fix their kicking infrastructure before the next campaign begins.
In contrast, the New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers have more volatile kicking histories, posting top-half marks in some years and bottom-tier numbers in others depending on who occupies the kicker position and the quality of the special-teams coaching staff. This pattern suggests that, while the league's worst-performing units are not always identical, a subset of teams consistently struggles due to structural rather than purely statistical factors.
Others may suffer from a short-term injury or under-performance in a single starter, leading to a temporary spike in misses without indicating a long-term talent drop. In such cases, the team's overall offensive efficiency remains high, but the kicking-unit data creates a misleading impression of systemic weakness until the sample size normalizes.
Successful clubs also re-tool their practice routines, running more game-like scenarios under the same conditions-the wind-swept outdoor stadium or late-game clock situations-that exposed their unit earlier in the year. When combined with minor tweaks to the long-snapper-holder relationship, this can produce a noticeable jump in field goal percentage over the final five or six games.
However, the long snapper and holder are primarily responsible for giving the kicker a clean, repeatable snap and hold, especially in adverse weather or on short-field attempts. Poor execution in the snap-hold-kick chain can turn a 40-yard chip shot into a miss, which is why the worst-accuracy teams are often scrutinized for both the kicker and the entire special-teams ecosystem rather than one individual alone.
What are the most common questions about Nfl Worst Field Goal Accuracy Teams Whats Going Wrong?
How often are the worst field goal teams the same every year?
Not every franchise that ranks among the worst in field goal percentage one season repeats that status the following year, but certain clubs appear with unusual frequency. The Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals, for example, have finished in the league's bottom five in three of the past five seasons, reflecting chronic instability in their kicking situations.
Why do some strong offensive teams still have bad field goal accuracy?
Sometimes even teams with prolific offenses can rank near the bottom for field goal accuracy, which often reflects situational and strategic choices rather than an incompetent kicker. For example, a team that regularly pushes deep into the red zone but fails to convert on third or fourth down may send the kicker onto the field from 45-50 yards far more often than the average club, slightly depressing their percentage.
Can a team fix its field goal accuracy in-season?
Yes, but it usually requires a personnel adjustment paired with intensive practice. The most common in-season fix is a mid-campaign change at the kicker position, either promoting a practice-squad specialist or signing a veteran free agent with a proven track record in high-pressure environments.
Which factors contribute more: kicker talent or offensive line play?
When it comes to field goal accuracy, both the kicker's talent and line-up execution are crucial, but they influence different phases of the attempt. Athletic talent, consistency under pressure, and comfort at various distances are overwhelmingly kicker-driven traits that determine how often the ball crosses the crossbar.