Kansas City Chiefs fans and coaches are clearly not on the same page when it comes to Harrison Butker. Fans are seeing him turn in the worst season of his career and many want the team to bring in competition. Coaches, who get to see him attempt significantly more kicks by including practice every week, are standing by the veteran.
And while fans tend to overreact to the highly-visible mistakes of kickers, usually meaning it makes sense to give the coaches the benefit of the doubt, this Butker situation has been brewing for longer than it might seem. Butker is the all-time Chiefs leader in field goal percentage, but a deeper look at the last few years takes a lot of luster away from that title.
Harrison Butker Hasn't Been as Good as You Think
To give credit where it's due first, Butker's career has been outstanding. He ranks No. 4 in NFL history and No. 1 in Chiefs history for field goal percentage, at 88.1%. Those are real accolades worth noting.
I won't even take too much away from them by focusing on the fact that Cameron Dicker and Eddy Pineiro hold the top two spots in league history. Or that the four names after Butker on the list are Chris Boswell, Josh Lambo, Daniel Carlson and Ka'imi Fairbairn.
But stats that Butker compiled early in his career aren't especially relevant to the current state of his kicking. This season has been brutal for him, and it's not the first down year he's had recently, either.
He's also likely benefited over the years from playing with an offense that has often been among the best in the NFL. In fact, if we compare Butker's recent numbers to all of the non-Butker Chiefs kickers to attempt a field goal since he joined the team, we can find an interesting trend.
Kicker | Field Goals Made | Field Goal Attempts | Field Goal % |
|---|---|---|---|
Harrison Butker | 229 | 260 | 88.1% |
Matthew Wright | 11 | 13 | 84.6% |
Cairo Santos | 3 | 3 | 100.0% |
Spencer Shrader | 3 | 3 | 100.0% |
Elliott Fry | 3 | 4 | 75.0% |
Matt Ammendola | 3 | 4 | 75.0% |
Obviously, a 3-kick sample from Cairo Santos or Spencer Shrader doesn't mean his 100% rate is more impressive than Butker's long-standing 88.0%. But what if we combine the non-Butker kickers and compare them to his recent seasons?
Kicker | Field Goals Made | Field Goal Attempts | Field Goal % |
|---|---|---|---|
Butker (Career) | 229 | 260 | 88.1% |
Non-Butker Chiefs | 23 | 27 | 85.2% |
Butker (Last 4 seasons) | 83 | 97 | 84.7% |
Butker (Last 2 seasons) | 32 | 39 | 82.1% |
So now, with a much more significant sample size, Butker's struggles start to look especially concerning. And for however much weight you want to put into Pro Football Focus grades for kickers (adding some context to how challenging a kick is can have its value), we see his last four seasons in a similarly concerning light:
- 2017: 84.1 (7th/42 kickers)
- 2018: 67.2 (17th/40)
- 2019: 71.8 (7th/36)
- 2020: 76.7 (4th/46)
- 2021: 79.3 (9th/46)
- 2022: 55.4 (36th/43)
- 2023: 90.3 (5th/39)
- 2024: 64.0 (29th/43)
- 2025: 52.5 (35th/38)
He's graded well below the league average in three of the last four years, and that tracks with those field goal percentage stats. When we're comparing him to injury replacements, those are generally going to be below-average kickers since they were looking for jobs during the season.
So if he's being outperformed by replacements, who would be available to challenge him if the Chiefs did get serious about potentially moving on?
Butker Replacement Options Aren't Exciting, But May Be Necessary
The Chiefs have some solid options available on other teams' practice squads, but even if they didn't want to sign someone directly to their 53-man roster (which they'd have to do to poach one of those kickers), there are interesting names available:
- Younghoe Koo (New York Giants practice squad)
- Jake Moody (Chicago Bears practice squad)
- Matthew Wright (Tennessee Titans practice squad)
- Lucas Havrisik (Green Bay Packers practice squad)
- Rodrigo Blankenship (free agent)
- Zane Gonzalez (free agent)
- Austin Seibert (Free agent)
In this group, both Wright and Seibert have converted on a higher percentage of their field goals than Butker over the last four years. Both Koo and Gonzalez graded out ahead of Butker on PFF last year. Blankenship's career rate (83.9%) tops Butker's mark over the last two seasons. Meanwhile, Havrisik just came in off the street for Green Bay in Week 6 and made all five of his kicks, including two field goals.
None of them are surefire upgrades, but they're also all players who are more than capable of outproducing what Butker has so far in 2025.
Of course, Butker himself, even when factoring in those recent struggles, is also usually capable of topping his 2025 numbers. So the challenge for the coaching staff and for GM Brett Veach is determining just how long they'll let this slide continue, and just how much they'll let him skate by on past successes. Replacing a franchise kicker is not a decision to make rashly.
But if we look at Butker's numbers over the last four years, replacing him would not be a rash decision based on an overreaction to a few weeks of struggles. It's a possibility that has been brewing under the surface for a long time, and one the Chiefs should be proactive about if he's still not looking comfortable as we get closer to playoff time.