{"id":751805,"date":"2026-02-14T14:54:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T14:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/751805\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T14:54:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T14:54:18","slug":"what-do-you-do-with-a-kicker-like-the-packers-brandon-mcmanus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/751805\/","title":{"rendered":"What do you do with a kicker like the Packers\u2019 Brandon McManus?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nobody\u2019s going to come out and tell you Brandon McManus had some kind of secretly good season in 2025. Kicker analysis is about as binary as it gets in football: did you make the ball go between the tall yellow things or not? Far too often in 2025, because of injuries or otherwise, McManus failed to do so.<\/p>\n

But what should the consequences be for a player who performs like McManus did in 2025? How have other teams handled a kicker who put up stats similar to McManus?<\/p>\n

I put that question to the test via Pro Football Reference and came back with some interesting stats.<\/p>\n

Over the last 10 years, there have been 32 instances of a player attempting 30 or more field goals in a season while making 80% or fewer of those kicks. (For the purposes of this exercise, I only looked at regular season kicks. McManus would, obviously, have converted a lower percentage of his kicks if you included postseason attempts this year.) Five of those 32 instances took place in the 2025 season, including McManus, and we don\u2019t yet know their fates, but outside of those guys we still have 27 other seasons\u2019 worth of kickers to look at.<\/p>\n

Of those 27 remaining seasons, 15 kickers were invited back to their team the next year. For whatever reason, their teams had faith in them and chose to bring them back, even after a down year. A few of the notable names in that group include Mason Crosby (who made just 73.4% of his kicks in 2021 but came back for 2022; the holder and repeated blocked kicks were a problem that season), Greg Joseph (who made just 78.8% of his kicks in 2022 only to return and make just 80% of his kicks in 2023; he was released after that year), and Brandon McManus himself in 2017 (he\u2019d rebound after that down year and hold steady for a few seasons, only to ultimately be undone by another down year in 2022).<\/p>\n

However, of the 15 kickers that came back to their teams, four didn\u2019t last through the next season. Notably, Younghoe Koo and Jake Moody lasted just a single game after their team stood by them. That\u2019s the tough binary of kicking in the NFL. We\u2019ll stand by you\u2026to a point.<\/p>\n

Of the 12 kickers cut by their teams after down years, many went on to kick for other teams \u2014 some quite successfully. But at least one (Roberto Aguayo) never kicked in the NFL again. And two others went on to repeat his down performance with a second team.<\/p>\n

One is Joey Slye, who has now had three seasons with three different teams that saw him convert 80% or less of his field goals on 30 or more attempts. And that\u2019s mainly because Slye is a distance merchant \u2014 he attempts a ton of long field goals. He had 14 attempts from 50+ yards in 2025 alone.<\/p>\n

The other player, of course, is Brandon McManus. Here\u2019s the full list of kickers who put up similar stats to McManus this season.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So what do you do with McManus? The Packers would certainly be in good company if they stood by their man. Plenty of teams on this list have done that, and it\u2019s paid off for more than a few of them. But plenty of others have moved on, too, and if pressed that\u2019s where I land.<\/p>\n

NFL kickers are booting field goals from longer and longer distances and making them more and more frequently. But while McManus was once lauded for his big leg, that\u2019s no longer his game. He\u2019s attempted just eight kicks of 50 or more yards in the last two seasons. 13 kickers attempted more than that number this year alone.<\/p>\n

If he\u2019s outside of the current kicking trends in the NFL, why bother hoping things get better? Yes, he might increase his overall percentage, but if it comes at the expense of connecting from distance, what\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n

The Packers ought to move on from McManus. Put another data point in the \u201cdidn\u2019t return to his team\u201d camp. Yes, that puts the Packers right back where they were at the end of the 2023 season, but with McManus barrelling toward his age-35 season, they were going to end up sooner than later anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nobody\u2019s going to come out and tell you Brandon McManus had some kind of secretly good season in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[7,41,345,52919,2514,2513,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-751805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-green-bay","10":"tag-green-bay-packers","11":"tag-green-bay-packers-analysis","12":"tag-greenbay","13":"tag-greenbaypackers","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116069563283303127","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751805","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=751805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}