DETROIT – The Detroit Lions officially re-signed kicker Jake Bates on Wednesday. Bates, 27, returns to the club after being tendered as an exclusive rights free agent earlier this offseason.<\/p>\n
Terms of the deal were not disclosed by the team. Bates set a franchise record for points in his first season with Detroit after previously playing in the UFL and working as a bricklayer.<\/p>\n
Bates produced 51 points for the Michigan Panthers during the 2024 UFL season, the second-highest total in that league. He connected on 17-of-22 field goal attempts, including three successful kicks from over 60 yards. His longest conversion in the UFL was a 64-yard field goal.<\/p>\n
Before his professional career, Bates played both football and soccer in college but served exclusively as a kickoff specialist. After graduating, he worked briefly as a bricklayer before signing with the Panthers. Since joining the Lions, he has led the NFL in both extra points attempted and extra points made over his first two seasons.<\/p>\n
Bates converted 26-of-29 field goals during the 2024 season and set a franchise record for points in a debut year. He recorded seven games with 10 or more points that season, which tied for the second-most in NFL history by a kicker in his first year. This performance also tied for the second-most 10-point games in the league that season and ranks second in franchise history.<\/p>\n
In clutch situations, Bates tied for the NFL lead in 2024 with four go-ahead or game-tying field goals in the final two minutes of regulation or overtime. During a Week 10 game against the Houston Texans on November 10, 2024, he became the first player in league history to kick a game-tying field goal of 55 or more yards and a game-winning field goal of 50 or more yards in the same fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Last year, bates finished 27-34 on field goals with a season long of 59 yards. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT – The Detroit Lions officially re-signed kicker Jake Bates on Wednesday. Bates, 27, returns to the club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,2506,68741,7,147,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-834044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-lions","10":"tag-detroitlions","11":"tag-digital-exclusive","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-lions","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116293003640278808","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834044","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=834044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}