The Chiefs have a plan for getting kicker Harrison Butker back on track this week
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Harrison Butker missed key kicks in each of the Chiefs' first three 2025 games.
- Coaches aim to improve Butker’s ball contact and focus on shorter kicks in practice.
- Despite early struggles, Chiefs' staff and players continue to support Butker’s role.
In the opening game of the season against the Los Angeles Chargers in Brazil, the Kansas City Chiefs needed to run a play the coaching staff calls “Mayday.”
Trailing 13-3 with less than 20 seconds left in the second quarter, with no timeouts, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes hit tight end Noah Gray for three yards, bringing the Chiefs to the Los Angeles 43 and setting up a 59-yard field-goal attempt.
Gray raced the ball to the line of scrimmage, and with two seconds left in the half, long-snapper James Winchester delivered the snap. Placekicker Harrison Butker nailed the field-goal try and, now trailing by just a touchdown, Kansas City had life.
The Chiefs’ defense opened the third quarter by forcing a three-and-out and the offense marched into the end zone to tie the game, or so they thought. Less than an hour after making his frantic and somewhat miraculous 59-yarder, Butker missed the 33-yard extra point wide right.
The momentum immediately swung back to the Chargers, and the Chiefs chased that point the rest of the night in an eventual loss to start the season.
The troubles continued in Week 2 for the franchise’s all-time field-goal percentage leader (88.2%), as Butker missed a 58-yard attempt in a three-point loss to Philadelphia. Wide right again.
Against the New York Giants on Sunday night, Butler doinked in his first field goal — a 54-yarder — off the left upright. He made the next from 48 yards before missing a 40-yard try wide right. He converted a later field goal and extra point, then missed a final extra point, pushing it wide left.
For a team that has won so many close games relying on Butker, the gaffes have raised concerns.
“We’re assuming right now that it’s just a small little thing,” Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub said on Thursday. “It’s technical.
“We look at the tape and we see — it’s an unusual miss for him to miss it right. So it’s got to be the way his contact, his ball contact, and we just gotta work smarter in practice. He doesn’t need to do more because he does a lot already.
“If anything, we need to cut down what he does and get more specific on making sure that the contact is good and the rotation of the ball and the fundamentals are down.
“You just go back. That’s what you do. You go back, and you go from scratch and you evaluate it and you talk about it and you look at the tape. You build your confidence back and then you go.” In August 2024, the Chiefs signed Butker to new four-year deal worth $25.6 million, including $17.75 million guaranteed, making him the highest-paid kicker in football.
The pact was well deserved: Butker was coming off a season in which he was 33-for-35 in field goals and perfect in his 38 extra points.
In 2024, Butker was closer to the league average, going 21-for-25 in field goals and 29-for-31 in extra points during an injury-shortened season. In 2025, now healthy, he is 7-for-9 in field goals and 3-for-5 in extra points.
Oddly enough, he has seemed to have an easier time making his shots from distance than his layups. Toub planned to address that issue in practice this week.
“That’s one of the things that we talked about,” the special teams coordinator said. “We kick a lot of long kicks in practice. To be a little bit more specific with it, we’re going to kick more shorter kicks and less longer kicks because the shorter kicks are the ones that you have to have.
“Obviously, you want to try to get the long ones, too, but we can’t spend our time doing that. We have to get more specific and talk about the accuracy of the ball on those shorter kicks. That’s what we’re going to do.”
In the offseason, Butker corrected his fall-down kicking style, which may have played in a role in him requiring in-season knee surgery last November. Toub said that there is no intention to go back to that style.
Meanwhile, Butker’s teammates still have the utmost confidence in him.
“We’ve been through this thing before,” said Winchester, the long-snapper. “To see how (Butker) comes to work every day with his head to the grind and critiquing everything that he does — yeah, very confident (in him).
“We’re always all in that guy’s corner, and he’s our guy. Confident that each and every day it starts with practice and you just go back and work on the small things and continue to get better.”
Since Mahomes became the Chiefs’ starting quarterback in 2018, Kansas City has won five of six games against the Baltimore Ravens, including an AFC championship. In five of those meetings, the winner was determined by one score.
The Chiefs play host to the Ravens in their Week 4 matchup Sunday, and in a game that’s expected to be tight, every point will matter.
“Hopefully this week is the start of a new streak, a good streak,” Toub said. “That’s what we always look at. It’s always about the next kick.”
This story was originally published September 26, 2025 at 5:30 AM with the headline "The Chiefs have a plan for getting kicker Harrison Butker back on track this week."
