Field Goals in the Mid American Conference

So, in reviewing special teams for the Falcons last year, I was beginning to wonder a few things. The first thing I wondered was how the league as a whole kicks field goals. My perception is that the kicking is pretty poor, but I was wondering whether that was true or not. And, what I wondered what a reasonable expectation was.

In order to discuss this correctly, let us first compare a field goal and a free throw.

The field goal requires an adequate snap and hold. It is contested and must be done in "real time" (Ugh, I know). Often the wind is blowing and the ball has to travel in the vicinity of 100 feet to reach the target. You have to use your foot and not your hand. The target is, however, relatively large as compared to the ball.

On a free throw the ball only has to travel 15 feet and the wind is not blowing. The shot is not contested. The shooter can let the shot fly when he is ready, within reason. You get to use your hands and thumbs, an evolutionary thank you. Admittedly, the target is close to the same size as the ball.

I'm just saying that I would think a 40 yard field would be harder than a free throw.

But it isn't, at least in the MAC.

Here are the numbers last year in the MAC:

All Field Goals: 69.7%
<20 yards 100%
20-29 yards 75%
30-39 yards 84%
40-49 yards 51%
50+ Yards 0%

Aggregated:

<40 yards: 80%
40-50 yards: 51%

MAC free throw shooting: about 65%

So, in fact, it is much easier to hit a field goal from inside 40 yards than it is to shoot a free throw.

Go figure.

But, this gives us some bench marks to work against. I would posit (because I have always wanted to posit something) that a kicker has two jobs: make the easy kicks almost all the time, and make the hard kicks most of the time.

Now that we have a better idea what easy and hard mean, let's look at how the MAC did.

Six teams were above the league average from inside 40. (When I have teams with two kickers, I combined them but in all cases the lesser-used kicker only had a couple attempts, at most). Those kickers were:

Ian McGarvey, BSU (91%)
AJ Principe, UB (95%)
Andrew Aguila, CMU (81%)
Joe Carithers, EMU (82%)
Jared Parsegheian, MU (95%)
Mike Salerno, NIU (82%)
Barrett Way, OU (85%)

Among these three, McGarvey, Principe and Pareseghian were clearly the leaders. Get to the 23 yard line, and these guys were a virtual lock.

Sinisia Vrvilo hit 67% of these field goals.

I would be happy, in fact, to have a kicker who was reliable from this distance. It would be a nice start. More than seventy percent of MAC field goal attempts are within 40 yards.

Now, let's look at 40-49. (I have thrown the 50+ attempts out because only one was made all year--clearly this was outside reasonable range for a MAC kicker). As mentioned, the league percentage here was 51%. Clearly, the ability to make these field goals truly sets a kicker apart.

It really does matter. If you are heading down the field with a six point lead in the fourth quarter and get to the 28 yard line, the ability to drill a FG and make it a two-score game dramatically alters strategy.

Five kickers hit above 51% of these attempts:

McGarvey (67%)
Vrvilo (60%)
Aguila, CMU (60%)
Alex Steigerwald, UT (71%)
John Potter, WMU (100%) This almost shouldn't count. He was 1-1 from this range.

To wrap the package up, there were only two kickers in the MAC who accomplished the goal we set in being very strong on the easy kicks and good on the hard ones.

McGarvey
Aguila

And of those, McGarvey was clearly the strong. He was over 90% on easy kicks and hit near 67% on the harder ones.

I think this will make it easier to review kicks from next year. It also reinforces my thought that our kicking was average or less, but not the worst.