Getty Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs looks back following a 23-yard field goal during the second quarter of a game against the Denver Broncos at Arrowhead Stadium on December 06, 2020 in Kansas City, Missouri.
NFL coaching staffs get creative when it comes to giving their players a day off. Some like to hold a race or have a non-skill player catch a punt, and others like to push their players to the limit physically. For Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, he likes to do the latter, with his field goal kicker, Harrison Butker, being at the forefront of a potential day off for his team leading up to their regular-season opener.
Butker Kicks NFL-Record FG
As shown by a video shared on the Chiefs’ Twitter page, Reid walks up to special teams coordinator Dave Toub and tells him that he will give Butker one kick, and if he makes it the team will have Monday off. The kick is a 64-yard field goal, which in an actual game would be tied for the NFL record set by former Denver Broncos kicker Matt Prater on December 8, 2013, according to NFL.com. Butker’s longest field goal ever in a game is 58 yards, which he did twice against the Los Angeles Chargers in 2020 in a single game, per the Chiefs website.
Butker lined up the kick with the weight of a day off for his team on his shoulders, and nailed it.
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Butker’s Career
After being drafted by the Carolina Panthers in the seventh round of the 2017 NFL Draft, Butker was cut and added to Carolina’s practice squad midway through September. That’s when Kansas City snagged him, and the rest is history. Since joining the Chiefs, Butker has made 121 of an attempted 134 field goals — a 90.3 percent field goal percentage — which puts him in second place all-time in career field goal percentage, just behind Baltimore Ravens’ Justin Tucker, who is sporting a 90.6 percent field goal percentage currently, per Pro Football Reference.
Week 1 Inching Closer
Kansas City is just a few days away from their regular-season opener, when they will face the Cleveland Browns. This Week 1 game will be a playoff rematch; the two teams faced each other during the divisional round last season in which the Chiefs beat Cleveland 22-17, which involved a strong first half by Kansas City and a second-half effort to hold off the Browns.
This time around, both teams will look a little bit different, which has the NFL landscape at odds in terms of who will win the game, and better yet, who will finish the season as the better team.
The most notable change for the Chiefs to keep an eye on this time around is the offensive line. The defending AFC champions have five new starters along the unit, which includes left tackle Orlando Browns Jr., left guard Joe Thuney, rookie center Creed Humphrey, rookie right guard Trey Smith, and first-year right tackle Lucas Niang. They will have a tough task in Week 1 when they face one of the toughest defensive fronts in the NFL in the Browns, who have two former first overall picks in Myles Garrett and Jadeveon Clowney, whom Cleveland signed this offseason to play opposite of their All-Pro pass rusher.
Clowney has grabbed headlines in Kansas City in recent weeks for his comments regarding ‘unathletic’ linemen, so Sunday’s showdown at Arrowhead Stadium will be the Chiefs’ first crack at showing off their revamped offensive line and doing so by potentially stalling an elite pass-rush unit.