The Buccaneers may have spent years searching for stability at kicker, but they’ve finally landed on a weapon they can trust every time he jogs onto the field. Chase McLaughlin has been as close to automatic as it gets, and through eight weeks he’s one of just two kickers in the NFL who has not missed a field goal or extra point.
That kind of perfection is hard to ignore, especially when the kicks keep getting longer and the conditions keep getting uglier. In Week 8 against the Atlanta Falcons, Tampa Bay played through a monsoon, and Atlanta kicker Nick Folk showed how brutal that night was by missing his lone field goal attempt by a wide margin.
McLaughlin didn’t blink. He hit all three of his field goal tries and added his only extra point in the downpour.
On the season, McLaughlin is 19-for-19 on field goals, with a long of 59 yards, and 17-for-17 on extra points. That’s the kind of clean sheet that turns a kicker from a specialist into a real edge.
And this isn’t just a hot stretch. McLaughlin has been making history from distance.
Last season, he became the first kicker ever to make 11 straight attempts from 50-plus yards in a single season. Among kickers with at least 25 attempts, he owns the best accuracy in NFL history from 50-plus yards at 85%.
Overall, he’s 47-of-55 from long range in his career, and since joining the Buccaneers in 2023 he’s 30-of-34 from 50-plus, good for 88%.
He also hammered a 65-yarder last season, which was the record for the longest outdoor field goal in NFL history at the time.
The broader numbers are just as strong. McLaughlin’s career field goal percentage sits at 86.34%, which ranks No. 14 all-time.
Since arriving in Tampa Bay in 2023, he has made 110-of-120 field goals for a 91.6% success rate. Only one kicker in NFL history has a career success rate above 90%.
That’s why McLaughlin has become such a luxury for Tampa Bay. When an offense only needs to get to the opponent’s 40-yard line to feel like it’s in range, that changes how a game feels.
The league is starting to catch up, too. Adam Fromal, FanSided’s resident kicking expert, ranked every kicker in the NFL using his proprietary Kick Value Added metric, which measures value added or lost relative to league distance expectations. McLaughlin moved from No. 7 in the preseason rankings to No. 3 in the midseason update.
No. 3 is strong company, but even that feels a little low for a kicker who hasn’t missed a thing. The Buccaneers have their answer, and McLaughlin keeps making the case that he’s the best in the NFL.
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