The Halftime Report: 2025 FBS Kicker Rankings Through 6 Weeks

Justin Stombler
2 minutes ago
5 min read

In the game of football, halftime is the only real break you get. It's a good chance to take stock and ask questions. How have things gone? How will we adjust? These questions will undoubtedly be on the mind of fans of every team as we come to a close on the first 6 weeks of the 2025 FBS season.

What about the kickers?

As we approach the back half of the 2025-26 season, let's get a reading on the kicking landscape.

Value Added?

In short, my rankings are based on a given kicker's Total Added Value, which has a pretty simple calculation.

Actual Value = FGM * Actual Point Value of Kick

Expected Value = FGA * Expected Point Value of Kick

Added Value = Actual Value - Expected Value

Let's run through a short example to show this in practice, considering Cincinnati kicker Nathan Hawks' 2024 season. On the surface, Hawks went a respectable 13/17 on the year, but what about his added value?

Table containing FBS kicking statistics — Expected Values here are based on 2024 data, and will therefore differ from 2025

1.78 points of Added Value for Hawks, which placed him at 57th out of the 134 FBS kickers in the 2024 rankings. While he was able to amass value both up close and at range, the middle distances were more of a struggle for him. Nevertheless, an above average kicker and an above average season.

This is the methodology behind the rankings below. Now that we've set the stage, let's see who's playing the part.

The Numbers

Through 6 weeks there have been 865 successful field goals on 1,125 attempts across the FBS, good for a 77% conversion rate. It is interesting that the overall conversion number hasn't changed from the Week 3 report, 77% seems to be the magic number.

Compared to the Week 3 report, the changes in accuracy over distance have taken a more expected shape, as accuracy now decreases as distance increases across the buckets.

Accuracy chart of all FBS kickers — A correction: I had mentioned in Week 3 that ECU's Nick Mazzie had missed a kick from under 20 yards. That was incorrect.

The large dip in accuracy between 40-44 and 45-49 yards has remained, and seems to be the ongoing story of the season. Kickers are performing better than normal up until 44 yards, but worse than normal after 45 yards.

Similarly to the last report, kicks from between 45-55 yards are currently potentially overvalued. Over the course of the 2024 season, accuracy on both 45-49 and 50-54 were about 10 percentage points higher than on the graph above. As such, the added value associated with these makes in 2025 is higher than in the past.

Let's see where the field stands.

First Half FBS Kicker Rankings

Here are your 2025 first half Value Added Kicker Rankings.

Ranking chart of all FBS kickers — These rankings use the kicker for each school who have the most attempts. In this instance, there are 2 kickers for NC State who have equivalent attempts, and as such no kicker was ranked for them at this time.

The Top 10

6 weeks in, Hawai'i's Kansei Matsuzawa has opened up a commanding lead on the field. His 9.8 points of Added Value are easily the most of the season, now almost 3 full points ahead of Bowling Green's Jackson Kleather, who himself has further cemented himself into the runner-up spot.

Matsuzawa has been impeccable, going 16 for 16 with an average distance of 37.7 yards, and at this point is the odds-on favorite to take this year's crown. Not willing to go down without a fight, Kleather continues to have an exceptionally good season as well.

Field plot of made and missed field goals

Aidan Birr has moved up from 5th to 3rd on his own perfect streak. 10 for 10 allows him to join Matsuzawa as the only two kickers in the country to remain perfect on double digit attempts.

To this point in the season, there's no better redemption arc than that of David Olano. After 3 weeks, Olano was 3/4 with a miss on a blocked kick from 28. 3/4 isn't inherently bad, but to miss from that distance so early in the season it was enough to land him in the negatives as the 105th ranked FBS kicker.

In the 3 weeks that have followed, Olano has gone 8/8, including 6/6 from 40+. He had one of the most impressive displays of the season in Week 6, going 5/5 against Purdue. His ranking change from 105th to 4th is the largest change of any kicker between these reports, either positive or negative.

The Bottom 10

Poor Denis Lynch. As was the case in the Week 3 report, Lynch holds the bottom spot in our rankings, with a dubious 4/10 start to the season. This has increased the gap between him and continued "runner-up" Owen Wiley from Akron, who has gone 3/8. Most of Wiley's misses are from between 45 and 50 yards, as such he hasn't lost as much Added Value. I would question the decisions of the Akron coach to keep trotting him out, however.

If David Olano's rise into the top 10 was worth a mention, so is Rutgers' Jai Patel's descent. Down 97 spots from 36th to 133rd, Patel has taken by far the largest fall in the 3 weeks since our first look. Patel began the season 5 for 5 with a middle-of-the-road average distance, but since then the wheels have (relatively speaking) come off. In his 2 games since, Patel has gone 0/3 with 2 of the misses coming from inside of 30 yards. Considering he's only taken 8 kicks on the season, it quickly becomes enough to tank a rating.

From one Lynch to another, Dylan Lynch is an interesting inclusion in the Bottom 10. 7/11 on the year, Fresno State's kicker is better than his compatriots both in percentage and total makes, what gives?

Firstly, an average distance of 35.3 is very low and leaves him susceptible to more lost value on average than other kickers. Secondly, a miss from 26 is always going to cause problems. Not to mention the Fresno State staff keeps sending him out beyond his effective range, as Lynch hasn't made a single kick from beyond 40 yards, while missing from 43, 54, and 55 yards.

Lastly, will someone please think of poor Braeden McAlister? Ranked 127th in the country, Georgia State has been content with routeinly making McAlister's life as difficult as possible. His average distance of 50.6 is easily the largest in the country. He's only made 1 kick out of his 5, but at some point you have to think he's overdue for some chip shots.

Laces Out: Interesting Tidbits

There has been significant movement amongst the rankings. Below is the table of those who shot up the rankings the most:

And who fell down the rankings the furthest:

Some of these differences are absolutely massive, and far beyond what I would've expected. However, it stands to reason that as more kicks are attempted throughout the season these changes will stagnate to a certain extent. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone in the 100s now to shoot up into the Top 10 come week 9.

Similar to the last write-up, there's not much correlation to be found between average distance and Added Value. While I still suspect that as coaches get a better sense of their kickers' ranges this will change (fewer misses if constraints are better understood), that hasn't happened yet.

Chart containing visual FBS kicking data

Likewise, the lack of correlation continues when looking at Added Value as a function of pure FGA. We'll have to see how much this holds throughout the back half of the season.

We're into the home stretch, and the time for massive change is over. The next 3 weeks will solidify any remaining unknowns, as kickers will begin to fully cement the way their season will be remembered.

When that happens, we'll be back to take a look.

In the meantime that's all for now. See you after Week 9!

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