Harrison Butker used to be one of the safest bets in the league. Now, the Chiefs are staring at a kicker problem they did not see coming.
Kansas City’s push back to the top of the AFC has come with one of its most established players in the middle of a rough season. Butker, a key part of the team’s three Super Bowl runs, is putting together the worst campaign of his career in 2026 and is on pace to blow past his previous high in missed field goals.
That kind of drop-off matters in a league where kicking can swing everything. For years, Butker’s value came from how steady he was when Kansas City needed points in a hurry.
This season, that trust has cracked, and if the Chiefs want to get back to the Super Bowl, they need him to straighten things out. If not, the conversation may turn to finding someone else.
The numbers tell the story clearly. Butker has made 11 field goals and missed five through six games in 2026, which leaves him at 68.8 percent - a career low. That’s a big fall from the standard he set early in his career, when he became one of the NFL’s most dependable kickers after taking over in 2017.
His best stretch came across 2018 and 2019, when he missed only 14 field goals and extra points combined on 182 attempts for a 92.3 percent success rate. That level of consistency held up for most of the years that followed, with 2022 standing out as the down year in an otherwise strong run. Even then, the bigger slide didn’t really begin until 2024 and 2025, when he missed nine total field goals and six extra points.
Now the decline is more pronounced. Over the last three seasons, Butker has missed 14 field goals on 79 tries, which works out to an 82.2 percent rate. His extra-point work has not fallen off in the same way, but the field goal side has become a real issue.
The 2026 numbers place him among the league’s least accurate kickers. The only players below him in field goal percentage are Harrison Mevis, who was cut by the Los Angeles Rams, Eddy Piniero, and Daniel Carlson, with Trey Smack tied with Butker.
There is one wrinkle worth noting: the misses have mostly come from deep range. Butker has missed just one kick and made nine from 49 yards and in, while from 50 yards or longer he has made only two of six attempts.
That still leaves the Chiefs with a problem, because long field goals are part of the modern game. But if the issue is mainly distance, that is at least something Kansas City can try to manage.
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