Nick Lowery - A Case for the Hall of Fame

By John Turney  

Morten Andersen and Jan Stenerud are the only two pure placekickers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Adam Vinatieri would most certainly get it. Current Ravens kicker Justin Tucker is on pace. If he sustains it he should also have an excellent shot at induction.

But what Hall-of-Fame voters are missing is that one kicker ... Nick Lowery is that name. Only those who really look at kicking analytics know this but once understood there is no doubt that Lowery is qualified.

Jan Stenerud was the first pure kicker inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The reason was that he was ahead of his time, that he was someone who was better than even the good kickers of his time and that gave his teams an edge.

One voter said as much, that Stenerud was a weapon. He was right.

Though it was not studied at the time that assertion proves true. When you compare Stenerud's kicking percentages overall and at the various distances (1-19 yards, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49 and 50+) he was better than the league average in his era.

Andersen was, too. He also had perhaps the most expensive leg of all time and he lasted forever and holds a pile of records. His place in Canton is deserved.

Adam Vinatieri's eventual case will be made on his clutch kicks that made the difference in winning Super Bowls and losing them for Belichick, Brady & Co.

Tucker's will be based on his accuracy. He's the most accurate of all time, to date, and compared to his peers he stands out as well but more on that in a second.

So, why should Lowery be mentioned with the four kickers who are often cited as the best ever?

Because when you compare what they did in terms of accuracy in their respective eras - and they were all great - Nick Lowery was better.

Author Rupert Patrick, in his book "A Statistical History of Pro Football: Players, Teams and Concepts" published his groundbreaking work which had a lengthy section on kickers. 

Patrick, who passed away prior to the publication of his opus, was a member of the Pro Football Researcher's Association and was the organization's 2019 winner of the Ralph Hay Award for lifetime achievement in pro football research, developed metrics that accurately compare kickers in their eras called PAL and PAL2 -- Points Above the Average, the latter more detailed than the others.

Roughly speaking, those two metrics compare the total number of points any given kicker achieved over what an average kicker would have scored on the same number of kicks.

The names previously mentioned - Stenerud, Andersen, Vinatieri and Tucker all score high (as do Lou Groza and others) but Lowery scores higher.

He's first in both.

The bottom line is that he's more accurate than the average kicker by a higher margin than all other kickers.

Wrote Patrick, "It was a bit of a surprise that the top career PAL score belonged to Nick Lowery; when I was compiling the data for this project I figured the career leader would either be Gary Anderson or Morten Andersen based on sheer longevity, and neither of them would have lasted very long if they weren’t outstanding kickers. The reason Lowery finished first by a big margin is that he never really had a bad season until the final season of his career."

As for PAL2, the more detailed version, Patrick added, "Nick Lowery tops this list and I don’t see anybody taking the top spot from him anytime soon."

His prediction was right, though Tucker has a chance but is not there yet.

Want more stats?

In 2017 Chase Stuart of Football Perspective, an excellent analytics site, developed his own metric that measures kicking accuracy - a kickers field goal percentage above the expected percentage broken down by ten-yard increments.

Stuart wrote then, "It's not much of a question as to who is the best kicker ever. Until presented with evidence to the contrary, that honor belongs to Nick Lowery."

Why? Because Lowery's kickers were accurate at a rate higher than expected compared to his peers. In Stuart's metric Lowery is the best ever.

Explains Stuart, "Lowery’s expected field goal rate was 70.5 percent, while his actual was 80.0 percent, so he was successful an extra 9.5 percent of the time he lined up to kick. That’s remarkable. In short, Lowery was the most valuable field goal kicker in NFL history."

But wait, you say that was six years ago, what about Tucker, what has he done since then?

Obviously, he's far above average, how could he not be? Current calculations show Tucker is 6.95 percent above expected - excellent but still behind Lowery.

That is two independent sources coming up with the same thing - when comparing kickers in their own era Nick Lowery is number one all-time.

Patrick and Stuart are certainly qualified as experts on the subject, no one has done more in-depth studies.

Didn't Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians write, "By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established."?

Not only was Lowery the most accurate kicker of his era. He kicked outdoors, facing difficult weather elements at Arrowhead Stadium and later in the Meadowlands. Come November things could get nasty in both those stadiums.

In his career, Lowery only kicked 10 percent of his attempts indoors compared to 56 percent by Andersen and 41 percent by Vinatieri, which includes retractable-roof stadiums which were usually closed. 

Only Tucker is in a similar boat as Lowery having tired 94 percent of his outdoors.

To be fair is worth noting Lowery had one advantage, playing 14 games in Denver. Andersen and Vinatieri play nine in the Mile High City and Tucker just three. 

Lowery probably should have been the all-decade kicker of both the 1980s and 1990s, he led both decades in field goal accuracy.

Morten Andersen got those first-team honors and Gary Anderson was second-team slot in both decades. Eddie Murray shared the second-team slot with Anderson on the 1980s team.

And while basic kicking accuracy statistics were available the voters seemingly ignored them because Lowery was more accurate overall and at longer distances than all those players. 

And looking back using the Patrick and Stuart models Anderson and Murray trail Lowery significantly.

Losing out to Andersen and Anderson/Murray is likely a major reason Lowery has been overlooked. 

All-Decade teams matter to many voters.

But he got his share of recognition anyway.

Lowery was first-team All-Pro in 1981 (NEA), 1985 (AP, NEA), 1988 (NEA) and also 1990 (AP, NEA, PFWA, TSN).  

He also got postseason recognition in 1986 when he was voted second-team All-AFC (UPI) and in 1992 when he was voted to his final Pro Bowl.

Some of the most astute writers of the time also saw Lowery's greatness and gave him their seal of approval in a few other years. 

In 1992 Lowery was picked as All-Pro by then- and future Hall-of-Fame voters Paul Zimmerman (Sports Illustrated), Gordon Forbes, (USA Today), Larry Felser(Buffalo News), and Rick Gosselin, columnist (Dallas Morning News).

Gannett's Joel Buchsbaum, Pro Football Weekly's personnel guru, named him second-team All-Pro in 1982 and 1986. 

In total that is seven years "above the line" - a year that he received some sort of All-pro recognition.

The German-born Lowery was always active in charitable work and in 1993 he was honored for it being voted the NFLPA's Byron “Whizzer” White Humanitarian Award which is kind of cool because growing up Lowery was the Supreme Court Justice's next-door neighbor.

He led the NFL in field goal percentage three times. In four separate seasons, he had or tied for the longest field goal in the NFL (Jan Stenerud four times, Morten Andersen three times, Adam Vinatieri and Justin Tucker once).

All this does not definitively say Lowery was better than all these other great kickers. It does, however, definitively say he should be in the conversation with the others.

Be he never is. That needs to change.

It was not an easy road for Lowery, as it never is for kickers, but even by those standards, it was a lesson in perseverance.

He tried out for the New York Jets in 1978 but didn't make the team. he got signed by New England and played a little before again being cut.

The next year he tried out for Cincinnati, Washington, Baltimore, New Orleans, Tampa Bay and San Diego.

All fails, but in 1980 Lowery finally stuck, replacing his idol - Jan Stenerud - as the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs.

He went on to break most of Stenerud's club records.

Lowery also set a few NFL records (since broken) along the way. He was the first player to score 100 points in six consecutive seasons and also set the record for most 100-point seasons (ten). In 1980 he set the record for most games with two field goals of 50 or more yards (he tied his own record twice more).  In his career, he held the record for the highest career field goal percentage and retired as having kicked the most-ever field goals.

Lowery once said of his kicking feats, "I did it by focusing on one kick at a time. That is the only way to do it."

May the same be true for Hall-of-Fame voters. Vinatieri's and Tucker's cases will be made in due time but now they should focus on one kicker at a time and Lowery should be the guy.

His accomplishments are worthy of a hearing. It's time it happened.