New Orleans – On paper, Super bowl Lix takes place to be one of the most equal games of all time. Even the ratings expect a tight match with the Kansas City chiefs favored by only 1.5 points on the Eagles of Philadelphia.
When you have a game that should be close, there is a good chance that it comes down to a basket, which happened the last time that these two teams were played in the Nfl Large game. In the Super Bowl LVII, Harrison Butker reached a 27 yards basket with only eight seconds to give Kansas City a 38-35 victory.
Although Bustker hit this kick, he missed a earlier in the match and it was because when it comes to launching goals on the field in the Super Bowl, nothing is given. The overall percentage of field objectives in the history of the Super Bowl is only 75.4%. When you only look at the attempts of 45 meters or more, the percentage falls to 52.2, which makes it essentially a draw.
The Super Bowl is a high power pressure cooker who has obtained the best of many kickers through history. There is a fine line between famous and sadly famous for the Super Bowl kickers. For each Adam Vinatieri, there is a Scott Norwood. If you make a big kick, you are a hero forever, but if you miss the kick, you go down in infamy.
If the Super Bowl of this year comes down to a big kick, the chefs and the eagles will probably feel well with the guy they send there. From the end of the Eagles, they have Jake Elliott, which is the fifth most precise botter in the history of the NFL qualifiers with a success rate of 95.7%. On the other hand, the Chiefs have Butker, who reached 32 consecutive kicks in the playoff series, a statistic which includes both additional points and goals on the ground.
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There are only 13 kickers in the history of the NFL which attempted at least 10 goals in the playoffs and made it at least 90% and Bustker and Elliott are both on this list. Basically, these are two of the most embedded boots in the playoffs in the history of the NFL and it will not be surprising that the game is decided by one of them.
Elliott could not put his exact finger why he was so good in the playoffs, but he said that he entered a “different mental space” for the playoffs.
“I think that when you arrive at these matches, the magnitude of them puts you in a slightly different mental space and for me, this is useful to simply lock a little more,” Elliott told CBS Sports in a Conversation in one. “I don’t know I change mentality or anything, but I like great moments. That’s why you are doing that.”
As he said, Elliott definitively likes great moments, which could explain why the only goal in the field he reports as a favorite in his career came in a previous Super Bowl. During the victory of the Eagles 41-33 against the Patriots to crown the 2017 season, Elliott reached a basket of 46 yards to put the eagles at eight with 65 seconds to play in the match.
The Kicker of the Eagles is almost always reliable, but philly fans had to hold their breath each time it is sent to try a kick of more than 50 meters this year. From 50 meters and in, Elliott was actually impressive in 2024, reaching 34 of the 36 kicks, including the playoffs (it is 94.4%). However, Elliott spent 0 for 7 to 51 meters and more.
Falling into a rut as it can sometimes go into the head of a botter: they begin to question their mechanics, they begin to question their steps, they begin to question their mental health. But for Elliott, this was not the case.
The Kicker of the Eagles feels good in the way he hit the ball. Questioned specifically about his long -distance difficulties, Elliott said that everything worked especially for him, the kicks simply had not entered.
“I think I hit the ball all year long,” said Elliott. “I think I was put in a few more difficult situations, and sometimes they do not pass and they are unhappy. I always feel very well in the way I hit the ball and I am just very oriented towards The weekly process: Watch a film, try to correct it and come back and make a big plan for next week.
For Elliott’s point, three of its seven innings came from 57 or more, a distance where all NFL booters combined to hit only 58.5% of their attempts in 2024, including the playoffs. Although he had trouble this year, Elliott certainly has the leg to hit these kicks. In 2023, he reached one of the most impressive goals on the history of the regular NFL season when he pierced a 59 yards in a radical dru rain to send a match against Buffalo in overtime .
The kickers may be the most ritual players on the field and if they have the impression that their process is working, they will stick and Elliott has the impression that its process is working. For the 30 -year -old, who was drafted by the Bengals in 2017, his process understands eating a quesadilla at night before any match.
Elliott can be in difficulty in the long term, but he seems convinced that his long kicks will not be a problem in the Super Bowl if the Eagles need him to hit one.
If you are launching long enough, you will enter a rut at some point in your career, and this is something that Bustker has also treated. After missing four games with a knee injury this year, Butker returned and quickly missed two kicks in his first three games.
Like Elliott, Bustker did not panic simply because he started to miss a few kicks.
“You must be consistent in weeks and months and it is easy to have a good game or a good practice, this is the way you assure yourself that when you are in your worst day of kicks, you are still a very good kicker, “Butker said this week.
If Bustker cannot shake his difficulties, he will seek to change his mental process, because changing your technique in the middle of the season is not something that most of the boots want to face (Bustker said he had really changed His technique after returning from an ankle injury in 2022).
“When you are a botter, especially when you are in the middle of the season, you sometimes don’t want to focus too much on the technical aspect,” said Butker. “If the ball enters, keep doing it. If it doesn’t happen, what is the smallest adjustment I can make to kick. I think that often, the best thing that a botter can do is to adjust the way they mentally approach the kick.
To give you an idea of ​​the complication of the kicks, consider this: Bustker generally landed on his left knee when he ends a kick, which you can see below.
This left knee is this one was operated on during the 2024 season and when he returned from this injury, his mechanisms were slightly extinct: he could not have the knee where he wanted, but he said that the Problem finally spread.
“When I came back from my knee injury, when I kicked alone and not during the team periods, I did not come across this left knee,” said Butker. “But as soon as you enter this period of pressure team, that’s when I came across the knee, so I just decided at the end of the day, when I get up in a big Moment, I’m going to come back to what my body wants to do.
Although the pressure is higher in the Super Bowl, Bustker and Elliott do a good work of compartmentalization. For Bustker, it means to make kicks so often that he does not feel different when he tries a training kick or a kick in the Super Bowl.
“I have the same routine, whether it is a winning kick or an additional point in the first quarter,” said Butker. “If I can continue to do these things even when it’s a big pressure kick, it makes the big kick feels like any other kick.”
The Super Bowl being played inside this year at the Superdome, you might think that it would make things easier for a botter, but Bustker stressed that there was in fact a lot of things that he will have to take into consideration.
“The biggest difference for me is to go from grass to lawn,” said Butker about kicks inside. “Each surface will cause a different amount of your plant to flow, so lawn you might sink a lot, lawns that you don’t run much. A certain herb is super hard, so you don’t run, so it affects your swing a bit .
This is a stadium that the two boots are generally not familiar. Butker has a career goal in superdome, but it only comes from 22 meters. Elliott also has a career attempt to the Superdome, which was a failure of 60 yards in week 3. However, do not expect what it is missing on Sunday. Elliott has 5 out of 5 on goals on the ground of his career at the Super Bowl, which puts him in equality with Ray Wersching for the most attempts in the field in the history of the Miss Sans Bowl.
Butker also has some records himself: he has the most career goals in the history of the Super Bowl (9) and the longest kick in the history of the Super Bowl (57), which came the season Last during the 25-22 victory of Kansas City against the 49ers of San Francisco in San Francisco.
These two booters have already made the story of the Super Bowl and it is sure to say that one of them could end up climbing their name in the NFL history book with a winning kick in the Super Bowl LIX.
