Can a Kicker Get Some Love?

It’s a big weekend in football with the Super Bowl today and the hall of fame selection announcement yesterday. By scrolling through the list of pro football hall of famers, you’ll notice that no full time punters and only one full time kicker (Jan Stenerud) have ever been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. These positions generally don’t require the strength that linemen need and definitely don’t get the glory that quarterbacks and receivers do, but they are still an important part of the game, so it’s odd that they’re so underrepresented in Canton. This is especially true of kickers since they comprise nine of the top ten scorers in NFL history. (The tenth, George Blanda, was a part time kicker.) What’s a kicker gotta do to get some love? What if they made every kick they ever attempted? Could they win an MVP then? If they could make a field goal from anywhere on the field, how many more wins could their team get?

We’re going to use the 0-16 2008 Lions as our test case. Since we’re assuming their kicker, Jason Hanson, is so good that he makes every attempted field goal, we have to add 3 points for every missed field goal he had in 2007. In addition, we’re assuming he can make field goals from anywhere, eliminating the need for a punter. (Sorry, Nick Harris, you’re fired!) This means that for every punt in a game, the Lions would have gotten 3 points. Below is a breakdown of how the outcome of each game would change:

Original Score	# of punts + missed FGs	New Score	Result
34-21	6	34-39	W
48-25	6	48-49	W
31-13	5	31-28	L
34-7	8	34-31	L
12-10	9	12-37	W
28-21	4	28-33	W
25-17	6	25-35	W
27-23	6	27-41	W
38-14	5	38-29	L
31-22	3	31-31	T
32-20	7	38-41	W
47-10	9	47-37	L
20-16	2	20-22	W
31-21	4	31-33	W
42-7	4	42-19	L
41-21	7	31-42	W

The new Lions would have been 10-5-1. (The tie came because there’s no way to tell who would have won in overtime.) We’ve learned that the perfect kicker could net his team as many as 10.5 extra wins. Sadly, we’ve also learned that the 2008 Lions were so terrible that even if we spotted them 3 points every time they touched the ball, they still wouldn’t win the division and would barely make the playoffs.