I've been doing a bit of thinking about the kicker position, and the potential impact of losing Gostkowski. It seems to me that with all the business that has to get done and the limited cap space, signing the best and likely to be closest to highest paid kicker in the league is perhaps a luxury the Patriots don't have. What I've been trying to figure out is whether they should. He's probably a $3.5 million a year kicker, at least, with something close to $3 million in cap hit -- even if he signed the exact same contract he just finished (which he could probably beat unless he wants to give a home team discount), it's a cap hit of $2.6 million. The market for median level kickers (I hate to use "replacement level" in this context, since it's kind of a term of art) seems to be around $900,000 to $2,000,000, so for purposes of the exercise, I guess I imagine the Patriots needing to take a cap hit in 2015 of around $1.2 to $1.5 million to get a competent replacement. So, the question is whether he's worth an extra $1 to $1.5 million of cap hit in 2015? Obviously, they thought he was five years ago, but kicking in the NFL has changed a bit. I looked back at the last three years of stats to try to get a sense of what the value of a top notch kicker is, over a median salary/median competence level kicker.
What jumps out pretty significantly is that kickers just don't miss kicks under 40 yards these days. There were 5 misses total under 30 yards last year. There were 30 misses from 30-39 yards last year in nearly 300 attempts -- a little less than one per team (and our guy had one miss). Compare this to 57 misses under 40 yards in 2009, the year before Gostkowski signed his deal. Put simply, missing kicks under 40 is rare and I'm not really sure there's a way to pick the guy that's going to get unlucky on one from any other guy. The real thing that seems to differentiate kickers right now is kicks over 40 yard. Gostkowski excels in that department. I can show my work, but essentially he's about 11 percent better than the median kicker. He also is usually high on the list in terms of attempts from this distance. Over the last three years, he's attempted 48 field goals over 40 yards -- an 11 percent better proficiency translates to about 15.84 points over this time, or 5.28 points per year. In short, he's good for an extra 1/3 of a point per game, on average.
There also is a field position component to field goal misses from 40+ yards. A missed field goal from that distance cedes an average of about 15-18 yards in average starting position, give or take. So, if you assume a median level kicker would miss on average about 1.76 more FGs than Gostkowski from 40 plus distance per year, this would cede about 30-40 yards per year in field position. You have to back out of this the percentage of times that such kicks are attempted at or near the end of a half, where field position doesn't matter. I don't even know how to begin figuring out the point component of yards of field position, but while it seems like a non-negligible number, it doesn't seem all that significant.
Gostkowski is also always at or near the top of the league in touchbacks, adding more field position. Finally, he plays most games outdoors, although looking down the list of kickers from last year, kicking has gotten so damned good in the NFL recently, that I'm not sure how much weather even matters any more for distinguishing kickers.
Roughly speaking, Gostkowski seems good, in creating and preventing points, for about a touchdown per year over a kicker of average competence. I would think there's some rough translation you can make from points to wins, like you can in baseball from runs to wins, but for a team that scores about 300 points a year, what's the value of those 7 points? Is it $1.4 million in cap room? Even if it is next year, kicking proficiency shows no sign of getting worse, and if you assume a 4 or so year deal, might kickers all be essentially interchangeable in a few more years as train and technology gets better, and can you still assume he'll be good for 1.75 fewer misses per year over any other kicker in the last years of a contract?
Not sure. My hunch is he's gone, and that's a very defensible result. He's certainly not at the top of anyone's mind right now, given that he had no work to do at all in the playoffs. He made one field goal in the entire run, and it was shorter than an extra point, if I remember correctly.
