NFL's golden age of kicking: Why can everyone make 60-yard field goals all of a sudden?

When Brandon Aubrey kicked a 64-yard field goal with plenty of distance to spare and no time left in regulation to send last week’s game between the Cowboys and Giants to overtime, it shocked the Giants. Wide receiver Darius Slayton said if Aubrey “didn’t have a bionic leg,” the Giants probably would have won.

Imagine how it would have felt, then, if they had lost on a kick even longer than the 64-yarder. Maybe even a record-breaker? Maybe a 70-yard field goal?

It seems ridiculous to contemplate that distance, but yes, the Cowboys said after the game that they would have been comfortable with Aubrey attempting to tie the score from “70ish” yards, according to coach Brian Schottenheimer.

"We've seen him make those before," he said. “We always want to try to get as close as we can. But he's always like, ‘Yeah, I'm good.’ That's pretty cool. Dak [Prescott] is always like, ‘What's the line to make?’ and I'm like, ‘Yeah, 50ish. You know, 50ish.’ He's like, ‘OK, but that's like a 67- to 70-yard field goal.' ”

Slayton also said  the Giants probably would have  beaten “30 or 29” other teams because of the length of that overtime-inducing kick. That might not be as accurate.

The NFL is experiencing a boom in booming kicks. While Aubrey certainly is among the best in the league at it, there are plenty of other long-range kickers out there who are driving footballs through the goalposts from previously unthinkable distances, changing the strategies and geometries of the game and ushering in a new age of kicking prowess.

They are putting the foot back into football.

Just ask the Jets, who lost their Week 1 game to the Steelers when Chris Boswell kicked a 60-yard field goal late in the fourth quarter.

“We had that number at around [the 40-yard line] where we knew that he was damn near automatic,” Jets coach Aaron Glenn said of that one, which should have put Boswell’s top range at around 57 yards. “When it was maybe three or four yards [farther], I was like, ‘Man, we’ve got to see if he can make this one.’ And give him credit, he nailed it . . . That's pretty damn good for him.”

Listening to old broadcasts, kicking even moderately long field goals used to be a complete crapshoot. In 1978, Marv Albert and Bob Trumpy were exultant in calling a 45-yarder by Seahawks kicker Efren Herrera against the Jets.

Just before Bills kicker Scott Norwood missed the 47-yarder in Super Bowl XXV that gave the Giants the victory, Jack Buck said on the radio broadcast, “That is a long way to kick a football.”  Al Michaels on the television call pointed out that it was the longest attempt of Norwood’s career off natural grass. It was at the end of his sixth season in the NFL and he’d been a Pro Bowler.

There were five games in each of the first two weeks of this season in which at least one field goal of at least 55 yards  was kicked by either team. Since 2000, there was only one week — Week 4 last year — with more.

Through the first two weeks of this season, NFL kickers are 12-for-15 from at least 55 yards, 31-for-37 from at least 50. Over a full season, that would project to 263 field goals of at least 50 yards. The record, set last year, is 195. The record before that, set in 2023, was 158.

Considering that teams get a touchback at the 35-yard line now and that seems to be about the average starting spot for drives, an offense need pick up a mere first down to be in legitimate scoring range. The Giants and Jets found that out the hard way.

So how did we get here? How did we arrive at a place where kickers are stretching the outer limits of field-goal range way back across midfield, where the once-intimidating 50-yard tries now are expected to go through? Where the record for the longest field goal in history — once a sacred 63 yards by Tom Dempsey in 1970 and not topped for 43 years but now held by Justin Tucker, who booted a  66-yarder  in 2021 — is in jeopardy in just about any NFL game played?

“I think, number one, the training of these kickers has elevated in the past 10 years,” Giants special teams coordinator Michael Ghobrial said. “The strength of these specialists has also risen up as well. I think these guys have understood what the weight room can do for them, what flexibility can do for them . . . It is pretty damn cool to see the range of what these kickers are able to do.”

Giants kicker Graham Gano, whose career-best 63-yard field goal with the Panthers beat the Giants in 2018, agreed.

“Guys are just bigger, faster, stronger,” he said. “You don’t really see the stereotypical kicker who looks like he can’t lift any weights anymore.”

He also credited younger players dedicating themselves to the craft of kicking much earlier than they once did.

“When I was growing up, there weren’t many kicking camps,” said Gano, 38. “I mean, I have kids in camps where I coach who are in elementary school learning how to kick. I didn’t start until high school. So that’s a big difference, a big gap.”

Another advantage for kickers this year is a subtle change to the rules regarding the footballs they use. In the past, they were given access to three K-Balls — the out-of-the-box ones used for kicking plays — about an hour before the game. Equipment staffers would have to hurry to try to break them in. This year, each team was given 60 K-Balls at the start of the season, so kickers have been able to practice with the very footballs they now use in games.

That may not seem like a big adjustment, but Gano said that  when he still was on injured reserve last year, Giants kicker Greg Joseph missed on tries of 47 and 45 yards, both wide left, in a game against the Bengals.

“The thing I remember is he came out of it confused, saying ‘I hit that ball really well,’ ” Gano said. “When you have kicked for a long time, you know if you hit it well or not.”

Well, the K-Ball from that game wound up being used in future Giants practices. A few days later, Gano was doing a workout, and every kick he attempted with that game-used ball went wide left.

“I was like, ‘OK, something is up with this,’ ” Gano said. “Sure enough, the next week I hit it again and the exact same thing happened. So there was actually something the matter with that ball.

“Sometimes the balls come in with crooked stitches or the seams aren’t straight. Sometimes it’s bad leather,” Gano continued. “And you won’t know that until you hit them in a game. So it’s good to be able to [work with them beforehand now]. It makes the game consistent and fair for everybody because you know what you are getting.”

Gano, clearly in the later stages of his career, has taken advantage of all of the changes that have occurred since he entered the NFL in 2009. He said he kicked a 64-yarder himself in warmups at Dallas and that the longest field goal he ever made in a practice was a stunning 78 yards.

“I am definitely not in my 20s anymore, but I’ve made adjustments,” he said. “I hit a way more consistent ball than I did early on.”

So when will we see that 70-yarder in a regular-season game like the one that Cam Little kicked for the Jaguars in the preseason this summer? Perhaps soon. Maybe even this weekend if the right dimensions of score, time, down and distance converge.

“I think a lot of guys have the strength for it,” Gano said. “There is a maximum distance for how far these balls can go. But a lot of it too depends on the conditions. If you are kicking in a good climate — Dallas, L.A., Vegas — those places, the ball really travels far. But you come out here [at MetLife Stadium], go to Buffalo, it’s less of a chance.

“You are seeing a lot of long ones early in the season, but as the conditions come along and the weather picks up, that will drop off,” Gano added. “But I think that’s what everybody likes to see. They like the long ball and points. And I’m excited about it. It’s an exciting opportunity for specialists everywhere.”

Even the ones with regular legs, not necessarily bionic ones.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.