{"id":373761,"date":"2025-09-17T00:05:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T00:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/373761\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T00:05:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T00:05:14","slug":"the-nfls-60-yard-field-goal-problem-and-how-to-fix-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/373761\/","title":{"rendered":"The NFL&#8217;s 60-yard field goal problem \u2014 and how to fix it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the longest time, it seemed certain Tom Dempsey \u2014 who became a professional athlete despite being born with no toes on his right foot and no fingers on his right hand \u2014 would stand alone, a most unlikely owner of a record that was barely ever approached.<\/p>\n<p>With two seconds remaining at New Orleans\u2019 Tulane Stadium on the afternoon of Nov. 8, 1970, Dempsey lined up to <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/04\/05\/tom-dempsey-former-nfl-kicker-dead-from-coronavirus-at-73\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">kick a 63-yard field goal<\/a> with his Saints trailing the Lions 17-16. A fair segment of the 66,910 fans had begun to flood Claiborne Avenue, bound for home.<\/p>\n<p>Those who stayed pondered the preposterous possibility of what Saints coach J.D. Roberts was asking Dempsey to try. In those years, the goal posts were at the goal line; this meant Dempsey\u2019s holder, Joe Scarpati, would be placing the ball at the Saints 37-yard line. Nobody had ever even attempted something like that before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew I could kick it that far,\u201d Dempsey would say. \u201cBut could I keep it straight?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the longest time, it seemed certain Tom Dempsey \u2014 who became a professional athlete despite being born&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,1084,9502,55,56,255,6,9,2833,3248],"class_list":{"0":"post-373761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-justin-tucker","10":"tag-matt-prater","11":"tag-new-orleans-saints","12":"tag-new-york-giants","13":"tag-new-york-jets","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-sports-columnists","17":"tag-sports-plus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115216719836005752","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}