The NFL Should Make Game-Winning Field Goals in the Final 40 Seconds Illegal

MMQB writers and editors are offering up their bad takes this week, so let’s force teams to chase touchdowns at the end of the game.

Welcome to Bad Takes Week, where MMQB staffers have been asked to expand upon some of their worst football takes. Keep an eye out for more of these throughout the week, and every story is posted here.

Sorry, Chiefs fans. I’m going to say it: Super Bowl LVII was a missed opportunity. Last year’s matchup for the Lombardi Trophy pitted two of the most fun-to-watch, make-something-out-of-nothing quarterbacks in the league right now against each other. It delivered for 58 minutes, and yet it ended … with two kneeldowns and a field goal.

Maybe it’s because the game of football wasn’t ingrained in my head from a young age—I’ll admit to being a relatively late convert, in the grand scheme of things—but something about a field goal being the final play of an otherwise neck-and-neck game feels wrong. It’s anticlimactic. It’s like placing a poorly tied ribbon on a gifted Maserati. And last year’s Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl proved it.

So, in the spirit of Bad Takes Week, let’s ban game-winning field goals entirely.

Butker kicks what one writer wishes would be the last game-winning field goal in the final seconds of a game :: Michael Chow/The Republic/USA TODAY Network

I don’t mean to diminish Patrick Mahomes, or Jalen Hurts for that matter, in saying this. If anything, changing this would allow quarterbacks more opportunities for recognition: The same QB who leads a 50-yard, go-ahead drive would actually be forced to finish it out with a touchdown, rather than passing it off to a kicker to win it. Playing on an injured ankle at State Farm Stadium in February, Mahomes threw two touchdown passes in the final quarter alone and rushed 26 yards to get his team into field goal range on the last drive. Anyone who has watched him play knows that the two-time MVP could have also scored one more touchdown in the final 1:36, before the team started kneeling down to kick a field goal with as little time left as possible. And it would have been exponentially more fun to watch him try against the Eagles’ defense than to see the Chiefs settle for a 27-yard field goal to end the biggest game of the year.

Here is what I propose instead: If a team is trailing by fewer than three points, or tied, it can not attempt a field goal in the final 40 seconds of the game. If the field goal would only tie up the game, then sure, go for it—but it cannot be a go-ahead score. The team in the lead can also still kick a field goal at any point.

Take the Chargers-Jaguars AFC wild-card game from just a month earlier as another example. Trevor Lawrence led his team to a 27-point comeback win, bouncing back from four first-half interceptions to throw four second-half touchdowns. And yet, minutes after Lawrence rushed for a two-point conversion to get his team within two points, and then after a gutsy fourth-and-1 play call led to 25 yards from Travis Etienne, the Jaguars ran the clock down and capped off the winning drive with a 36-yard field goal. It almost feels unfair that Jacksonville was able to stop there.

The bottom line is football is more fun with more touchdowns. Had Mahomes been forced to use the final minutes of Super Bowl LVII to get in the end zone, the Eagles might have even had time to respond and tie it up. Hurts had already put on one of the greatest Super Bowl performances ever at that point, scoring 20 points (including a two-point conversion) and tying the record with three rushing touchdowns. Removing kicks from that stage in the game would mean the quarterbacks, and their whole offenses, would have to settle things.

All of this is just looking at two games from last year’s postseason alone. Imagine how many more fittingly aggressive endings to great matchups fans could have gotten without the option to win off a gimme field goal.

And with field goals still available to tie it up (and for the other 3,560 seconds on the game clock), the kicker position retains its value. Justin Tucker and Harrison Butker have nothing to worry about. All this would do is take away the easiest option teams have. It would force them into an interesting decision: Teams could still kick go-ahead field goals if they’re willing to risk leaving the opponent 40 seconds. Otherwise, they have to play for a touchdown.

This is all important to consider as more kickers in the league are attempting, and making, longer field goals. During the 2021 season, kickers made 120 field goals from 50 yards or more (a record at the time). In ’22, that number was 154, a nearly 30% increase, and the success rate on them was 68.75%. That percentage has steadily increased over the past few years, while the number of attempted and made field goals from that far out continues to grow quickly. (There were as few as 85 made in ’16, the year Tucker tied the previous record of 10 50-yard field goals in a season.)

Simply put, NFL kickers have never been better. As practice technology improves, who is to say that number won’t continue to grow? And if they’re that good, and prolific, from 50 yards out, the chip shots feel automatic. We might as well put a stop to it while we can. I love a JT field goal as much as the next D.C.-area football fan, but when it means the culmination of a never-say-never, back-and-forth battle (during which people fight to keep the ball in their hands as if it’s their firstborn child) is determined by someone’s big toe, I don’t want it.