The New England Patriots have basically perfect through three weeks of action, with one glaring exception. Longtime kicker Stephen Gostkowski is having a rough season, most recently missing an extra-point attempt against the New York Jets. This wasn’t his first miss of the season, as the 14-year veteran missed a field goal and two extra points in Week 2’s matchup against the Miami Dolphins.
Gostkowski isn’t the kicker he once was, but he’s still the best option for the 2019 New England Patriots. When looking at salary, possible alternatives, and the overall value of kickers, there is no reason to try to move on from the three-time Super Bowl champion. For better or worse, this team needs to stick with Gostkowski for at least the remainder of the season.
Stephen Gostkowski the Best Kicker Available for New England Patriots
Stephen Gostkowski Cap Hit
Over the offseason, the Patriots signed Gostkowski to a two-year, $8.5 million dollar contract. This deal actually served as decent value for New England, as his $3.05 million cap hit is the 13th-highest in the NFL.
However, that relatively low cap number comes with a caveat. If the Patriots released Gostkowski, they’d have to carry a $3.5 million cap hit for the remainder of the season. According to @patscap, New England currently has just $1.8 million in available spending space. As the season goes on, that number will go down thanks to emergency injury signings. Quite simply, New England doesn’t have the financial flexibility to add an additional $450,000 in dead money while also adding a kicker, and his associated salary, to the payroll. Devoting this many resources into the kicker position simply isn’t smart team-building.
Of course, this hypothetical also assumes that the Patriots are actually able to find an upgrade. Kicking at an NFL level is no easy task, and there already aren’t enough good kickers to go around. Roughly half the teams in the NFL aren’t comfortable with their kickers, yet they can’t do anything about it simply because there aren’t any better options.
Even if there was a kicker who had better numbers than Gostkowski, that doesn’t mean they’ll be better moving forward. Kickers are notoriously volatile and their success typically doesn’t translate from one season to the next. Trying to scout kickers is next to impossible, simply because the variation from season to season is impossible to predict.
But THE most important point, and the point to take away if nothing else, is that a kicker's accuracy last year tells you close to nothing about his accuracy the next year! Kickers regress to the mean. pic.twitter.com/JFIy3wWBUM
— John L (@ChiBearsStats) August 12, 2019
Kickers Don’t Matter
Even if the Patriots could somehow find a clear upgrade, it’s not worth their effort to make the move. Despite popular narratives to the contrary, kickers rarely determine the outcome of a game. The position hardly sees the field and can only account for a maximum of three points on any given play. Additionally, kickers need the offense to get them into reasonable field position before they can do their thing.
Several Patriots fans point to the 2015 AFC Championship Game against the Denver Broncos as the beginning of Stephen Gostkowski’s decline. During that game, Gostkowski missed a PAT which indirectly forced New England to go for a two-point conversion at the end of the game. By connecting these two dots, some fans equate that loss to Gostkowski’s missed point.
However, a deeper dive tells a different story. Pro Football Reference created a stat called Expected Points Added, which essentially measures a play’s impact on the score of the game. Gostkowski’s missed PAT, as expected, had a -1.0 EPA correlation. During the first half alone, New England had 20 plays with a higher EPA swing. Essentially, Gostkowski’s missed kick had the same exact impact as Tom Brady taking a two-yard sack on 3rd and 14.
Gostkowski the Only Choice
Stephen Gostkowski is no longer an elite kicker, and the Patriots should probably consider bringing in training camp competition in 2020. However, Gostkowski remains the best option for the 2019 Patriots. Releasing Gostkowski would cause New England to lose even more salary cap space, and there are no better alternatives on the open market. Even if the Patriots could find a better kicker, it’s not worth the effort simply because kickers don’t dramatically affect the outcome of a game. If you lose a game because of a kicker, chances are there are at least a dozen plays which had a bigger impact than that one kick.
For better or worse, Stephen Gostkowski deserves to be the guy for the rest of the season. There really is no other logical choice.
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