JohnTurney wrote:Kickers
Morten Anderson
Lou Groza
Adam Vinatieri
Jan Stenerud
Punters
Ray Guy
Yale Lary
Shane Lechler
Jerrell Wilson
Returners
Mel Gray
Devin Hester
Billy "White Shoes" Johnson
Brian Mitchell
Kickers should be Groza and Stenerud, but will be Vinatieri and either Groza or Stenerud, probably Groza.
Punters will be Lechler and Guy
Returners will be Hester and Johnson
Here are the career kicking charts for Anderson, Groza, Vinatieri, Stenerud and Lowery:
As before, I'll have to explain many of these rankings, so I'll just cut and paste from the last time I posted a similar chart:
K% is short for kicking percentage, which is a little stat I came up with, and the formula is K% = 100* (XPM + 3*FGM)/(XPA + 3*FGA). In short, it is a ratio between how many points a kicker actually scored on his kicks, and how many he could have scored had he been successful on all of his kicks. A kicker with a K% of 90 means he was successful on converting 90 percent of all the points he attempted. A perfect score is obviously 100.
FG% is obviously field goal percentage.
PAL is Points Above League, and for each kicker in each season, the formula is: PAL = (KXPM + 3*KFGM) - ((KXPA * (LXPM - KXPM)/(LXPA - KXPA)) + 3* (KFGA * (LFGM - KFGM)/(LFGA - KFGA)).
PAL is basically points scored by the kicker, minus the kickers' extra point attempts multiplied by the league XP percentage (with the kicker stats removed), minus three times the kickers' field goal attempts multiplied by the league FG percentage (with the kickers stats removed). The result is the number of points above or below average the kicker was relative to the league (compared to how many points an average league kicker would have scored given the same number of field goal and extra point attempts). If the PAL is positive, the kicker is above average, and if the PAL is negative, the kicker is below average relative to that season.
P/PT is 100*PAL divided by kicker points. It puts a kickers' PAL score into the context of the number of points he scored.
PAL2 is more accurate and more complex than PAL. It's similar to PAL, except all field goals are not lumped together. In PAL2, all of a kickers' FG attempts are separated by distance, and he is compared relative to how the rest of the NFL was at each particular distance he attempted a field goal from. If a kicker attempted a 52-yard field goal, he is compared to how the rest of the league that season (except for himself) did in 52-yard field goals, and that success percentage is multiplied by the number of attempts he had at 52 yards, and that is done for all his attempts. Like I said, it is very complex, but much more accurate than PAL.
P2/PT is 100 *PAL2/Points scored
AAT is average attempted field goal distance, for the entire 2010-2018 era.
AMK is average made field goal distance, 2010-2018.
AMS is average missed field goal distance, 2010-2018.
PT/G is simple Points scored per game.
PAL/G is PAL divided by games played
PAL2/G is PAL2 divided by games played
The most important category is PAL2/G, which is about .5 for Groza, Stenerud and Lowery, meaning that over their careers, they are about a half point better per game than an average kicker from their era.
The two highest peak values for a kicker all time were Stenerud 1967-70, when he averaged about 1.5 PAL2/G over those four seasons, and Groza between 1952-54, when he averaged about 1.8 PAL2/G over those three seasons. Also, Groza had many clutch kicks in his career, and his field goal won the 1950 NFL Championship game. Stenerud's most famous FG attempt was probably the miss in the Christmas Day playoff game against Miami in 1971, and he booted three FG's in Super Bowl IV. Nick Lowery, on the other hand, never won any big playoff games with last-second field goals other than the 1993 OT playoff game against Pittsburgh, and he missed a last second field goal in a 17-16 loss to Miami in the 1990 Wild Card game. I've always had the three greatest kickers ever rated as Groza, Stenerud and Lowery, in no particular order, but I just don't think I can rate Lowery in the same class with Groza and Stenerud as the best of all time.