Something’s clearly off with Harrison Butker and it’s alarming

Butker pushed a 40-yard field goal wide right in the second quarter and then missed an extra point later in the fourth. His 54-yard kick in the opening stanza went in, but only after banging into the upright.

It was the first time Butker has missed both a field goal and an extra point in the same game since the 2021 Divisional Round game against the Buffalo Bills, and it was just the ninth time that has happened in his nine-season career.

It’s an incredibly small sample size, but Butker’s 60 percent extra point percentage (he’s three of five) would easily be the worst of his career. His 77.8 field goal percentage (seven of nine) would be the 30-year-old’s second-lowest success rate.

It’s important to point out that Sunday’s missed extra point came after a 15-yard penalty, pushing the kick from a 33- to a 48-yarder, and that the missed field goal against the Eagles was from 58 yards out, which is hardly a layup.

Chiefs fans also saw Butker nail arguably one of the most impressive kicks of his career, a 59-yard fire-drill bomb that was possibly one of the fastest field goals in NFL history.

But that highlight has been overshadowed by the inaccuracies that followed. It’s hard to shrug off the explainable, if not excusable, misses entirely when other, easier kicks are wide of the mark too. The misses still count, after all.

An uneasy feeling

I’ll admit it—I’m worried about Butker.

I’ve got an unsettling uneasiness, an anxious apprehension about the way the season has started and how that could be an indicator of what is to come. And strangely, it isn’t actually Butker himself but rather some of his former rivals who are feeding into that doubt.

Kicking is a volatile gig. You can be awesome at it—until suddenly, one day, you aren’t anymore. That’s exactly what happened to Justin Tucker and Younghoe Koo.

Up until recently, Tucker had the best field goal percentage in the history of the NFL—above 90 percent. Koo was right up there in terms of accuracy as well. Between them, Koo and Tucker were both safe as houses when it came to lining up the goalposts. Then the house fell down.

Last year, inexplicably, both Koo and Tucker struggled. Their accuracy rate fell sharply to 73 percent. The Baltimore Ravens cut Tucker last offseason, and Koo was released by the Atlanta Falcons last week after his struggles continued into the new season.

In the blink of an eye, two of the league’s most extraordinary kickers were suddenly dreadful, and I’m worried the same thing could happen to Butker.

We know he’s had knee issues. Butker had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee last year and spent about a month on injured reserve as a result. And when it comes to kicking, knees are pretty important.

Maybe there are still some lingering niggles from that knee injury that have been hampering Butker recently. Maybe he tweaked his technique in the offseason. Or maybe, like the entire Chiefs team seems to be experiencing, it’s just been a slow jump out of the blocks that will get better as the season progresses.

I hope one of those things is the reason. If it isn’t, I’m worried we could be seeing something far, far worse—the sudden decline that can befall even the best kickers in the sport seemingly out of nowhere.

I’m nervous that it could be. I really, really hope it isn’t.