Jacksonville Jaguars’ kicker Cam Little knocked through a whopping 70-yard field goal in the team’s preseason opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
So what went into that decision and the play leading up to it?
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As head coach Liam Coen described after the game, the Jaguars were trying to get the ball past midfield, but that was a difficult task with how Pittsburgh was defending the play.
As a result, Nick Mullens ended up just checking the ball down to Bhayshul Tuten, who picked up three yards and moved the Jaguars to their own 48-yard line. Jacksonville then called a timeout with one second left.
“There was five seconds, we tried to run all slants to get a down timeout situation,” Coen said. “Try to get it past the 50 if you could. They played 3-deep soft zone. There wasn’t an easy completion right now, so we checked it down and just banged it. Cam looked at me and was like, ‘I want it.’ And so gave it a go. That was pretty cool to see.”
The NFL regular season record for a field goal is 66 yards. With Little’s attempt coming in the preseason, he doesn’t hold the longest field goal made record, but he can now claim the unofficial title.
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According to ESPN, there have been eight unsuccessful field goal attempts of 70-plus yards in the Super Bowl era prior to Little’s kick.
“We attempted a lot of long field goals in training camp,” Little said after the game. “I had the opportunity a couple times to hit some probably 65-pluses before and so I really wanted to go out there and see. Kind of in range, I guess you could say, so wanted to go out there and see what we could do and it ended up going over the uprights. So it was pretty cool.”
This article originally appeared on Jaguars Wire: Cam Little’s 70 yard field goal: Jaguars Liam Coen on how it transpired