While Kansas City’s placekicker adjusts his form to avoid injury, his responsibilities are changing.
Over the last decade, the Kansas City Chiefs’ Harrison Butker has arguably been the NFL’s most clutch kicker. So it’s easy to think that as he enters his ninth season, he has it all figured out.
But speaking after Tuesday’s training camp practice at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Butker revealed he’s working on a couple of changes for the 2025 campaign.
The first involves something that drew scrutiny last season: after a placekick, Butker would fall to the knee of his plant leg. This received increased scrutiny when he missed four games after meniscus surgery.
For this season, Butker is working on not going to the ground on his follow-through.
“I think the majority — if not all — [of] my kicks, I’m staying upright,” he explained to reporters. “On some of them, my knee doesn’t quite touch on the follow-through, but it gets a little close sometimes. I think — just for longevity purposes — staying upright, skipping through, and being more repeatable is only going to help me — and my body has felt better.”
The early returns have been promising. But Butker realizes that game situations may be different.
“I don’t feel like I have the wear and tear on it when I’m collapsing as much,” he observed. “It’s easy to do it on your own when you’re at a high school field kicking with no one around you. But when you have pressure and the teams around you and you have to have a good off-time, that’s when you’ve really got to make sure that you’re kicking with that smooth skip through — and you’re not falling down.”
After missing time in two of the last three seasons with leg injuries, Butker knows improved mechanics are needed to extend his career.
Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
“Now,” he remarked, “hitting 60 balls in practice is a lot easier on my body, and I can do it more often. Then for longevity, I think a whole season will feel a lot easier on my knees. I’ve got a left ankle and a left knee, and I’m just trying to make sure I’m staying healthy and not putting too much pressure on the joints.”
The other change Butker is working through is common to all of the league’s kickers. With the league’s revised kickoff rule now sending touchbacks to the 35-yard line — only about 25 yards from the top kickers’ field goal range — there will be more pressure for kickoffs to hit the “landing zone” between the 20-yard line and the goal line.
“No one’s happy if the return team gets the ball out to the 35,” he acknowledged. “So basically, as a kicker, you don’t want to hit a touchback. So, if I can place it in there, have good direction [and] good hang time on it — and let our kickoff team work and hopefully stop them inside the 30 — [it] would be great. That’s kind of what my job is, so I’ve got to avoid hitting it out of bounds. That would put the ball at the 40… I’ve got to really hit it in the landing zone.”
So in training camp, Butker has often been on the practice field before any of his teammates, honing his craft. He compared what he’s doing to punting — and to an entirely different sport.
Denny Medley-Imagn Images
“I try to treat practice like a game,” he said. “I come out here early and kick both directions and try to get dialed in. If I was just kicking field goals or just trying to hit touchbacks, the distance doesn’t matter. You hit the same thing. [But] a punter, when they’re doing pooches, they have to worry about the distance. Now, as a kicker, I have to hit the ball in the landing zone. Distance does matter.
“So, I do think of myself more as a golfer. You have to place it in there. I think that’s why you really have to practice both directions, left to right, and make sure you’re dialed in — [so] that you can just place the ball in the landing zone. It really makes the kickoff feel more like a pressure kick.
“Before, you could just go out there and let your legs swing and try to hit it through the uprights and hit a touchback. If they wanted a high hang time again, [you could] hit that ball to the moon. If it [went] to the five with hang time, everyone was happy. If it was a touchback, [it] still wasn’t a big deal.
“But now? There’s a lot more pressure on the kicker to hit it in that landing zone.”