FG kicker situation

[BrunswickDawg]

Good stuff Prediction Pain.
I went to a High School that has produced some well known kickers historically - guys who never missed in high school, had the leg for 45+, got full rides to D1 schools, and played for and won national titles. I would put any of them in a game winning situation without question. All are fairly well thought of in their college careers. When I went and pulled their %, I was shocked:

Rex Robinson (UGA, 1977-1980) 66.7%
Scott Sisson (GT, 1989-1992) 68.2%
Tim Montz (OM, 93'-'96) 64.8%
Hap Hines (UGA, '96-'99) 70%

Your memory really can play tricks on you sometimes about kicking games. If those guys missed the chip, but hit the game winner, they live in infamy!

[Todd4State]

Good stuff Prediction Pain.
I went to a High School that has produced some well known kickers historically - guys who never missed in high school, had the leg for 45+, got full rides to D1 schools, and played for and won national titles. I would put any of them in a game winning situation without question. All are fairly well thought of in their college careers. When I went and pulled their %, I was shocked:

Rex Robinson (UGA, 1977-1980) 66.7%
Scott Sisson (GT, 1989-1992) 68.2%
Tim Montz (OM, 93'-'96) 64.8%
Hap Hines (UGA, '96-'99) 70%

Your memory really can play tricks on you sometimes about kicking games. If those guys missed the chip, but hit the game winner, they live in infamy!

I imagine that placekicking like most things in football has improved a lot as far as technique goes since the 1990's. For example there are some guys in the Pro Football HOF like Joe Namath that have more INT's than TD passes in their career. If Namath did that today, he would be on the bench.

People can say- "Oh wow our FG percentage was just as good as Westerfield back in the day or whatever". But the reality is there are a few kickers like Gary Wunderlich of Ole Miss who are kicking FG's at a clip of 95.7% last year. What was good in 1999 may be 13th in the SEC today.

The other thing about FG% is it is a naturally small sample size so one miss can have a big impact on the data. I would imagine that FG% alone is not the best indicator of kicking talent. Someone probably needs to come up with a formula which measures FG%, distance/range and then maybe some kind of score for "clutch FG's made". A FG made in the fourth quarter to win the Egg Bowl is much more impactful and pressure packed than a field goal during the second quarter of Alcorn State when we're up 21-0. People can say- "Oh, that's just your memory", but I do think there is something to be said for making game winning field goals and I don't think it should be belittled because one guy made them and another didn't and they had similar FG%'s.

[Prediction? Pain.]

Someone probably needs to come up with a formula which measures FG%, distance/range and then maybe some kind of score for "clutch FG's made."

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/feist2009

Look at the "Field Goal Efficiency" stat. Going by that metric, we were great in 2009 and 2015, awful in 2013 and 2016, and slightly on the poor side of mediocre in Mullen's four other years. That actually corresponds pretty well with the raw stats from SEC play that I found earlier. (Didn't compare our national advanced-stat ranks with those of our SEC brethren, though, so I don't know if the teams are all as clustered together there, too.)

[Todd4State]

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/feist2009

Look at the "Field Goal Efficiency" stat. Going by that metric, we were great in 2009 and 2015, awful in 2013 and 2016, and slightly on the poor side of mediocre in Mullen's four other years. That actually corresponds pretty well with the raw stats from SEC play that I found earlier. (Didn't compare our national advanced-stat ranks with those of our SEC brethren, though, so I don't know if the teams are all as clustered together there, too.)

Good stuff! Thank you for that! I figured that someone came up with something with all of the factors I mentioned.