MVN - Most Valuable Network

Why Field Goal Percentage is Meaningless

Player Profile:  Shaun Suisham, Kicker, Bowling Green State University

Age:  26

NFL Experience:  3 years

Contract Remaining:  None; Unrestricted Free Agent

A quick hypothetical question for all those Hog Heaven readers out there:  you have a 35 yard Field Goal attempt in the closing seconds of the first half of a Week 17 game Redskins vs. Cowboys.  You have on your roster supereverythingclutch Kicker Adam Vinatieri, and kickoff specialist Shaun Suisham on your active roster.  Who do you want taking the kick?

Believe it or not, if we are to believe Suisham’s FG percentage over a year and a half in Washington, he’s more likely to hit the hypothetical kick than Vinatieri is!  However, if you took Vinateri, you aren’t necessarily wrong, and I’ll explain why in a second.

Suisham is the tenth most accurate kicker of all time according to FG percentage (82% career).  His 84.1% accuracy as a Redskin would put him at 5th all time if you eliminated the Dallas years.  At 84%, Suisham hits a higher percentage of his field goals as a Redskin than Adam Vinatieri did as a Patriot.

So what does that mean for the Redskins?  It means absolutely nothing.  The Suisham to Vinatieri comparison was simply my way of showing you how far off your preconcived notions of FG percentage were.  Now that I have your attention, let me explain why.

In Pro Football Prospectus 2007 (the Arizona chapter), Aaron Schatz did research to prove that field goal percentage was overrated.  Not only did he prove that, but he found pretty convincing evidence that the ability to make field goals is more luck than skill, and that FG % never remains consistent from year to year.  In fact, the correlation coefficient between FG % in any given year, and the same kicker’s FG% from a prior year was actually slightly negative!  Basically, that means that a career high FG % year is not only not going to predict any future success, but actually weakly suggests that the kicker is more likely to struggle the following season.

Suisham connected on 82+% of his attempts in 2007, but rarely attempted a FG over 50 yards (3 on the season).  Suisham is unlikely to hit at a 82% rate again next season; he’s most likely to kick somewhere between 76% accuracy and 81% accuracy.  That’s a pretty big gap, and if he suffers a hard luck streak, you can all but expect that 4 out of 5 Redskin fans will want to run Suisham out of town on the very next train.

While FG % can not be improved on by changing the person kicking, kickoff distance absolutely can.  The nicest thing we can say about Suisham’s kickoff ability is that he can kick the ball a lot further than Nick Novak or John Hall could.  Therefore, we can say that Suisham is the team’s best kicker since…I’m going to say Brett Conway back in 2001 (feel free to argue that one).

However, a lot of teams do have kickers who can kick the ball farther that Suisham with consistency.  The Redskins would be wise to take a look at Seattle’s Josh Brown in free agency this year, or even Tennessee RFA Rob Bironas.  However, if the team can’t cheaply acquire a guy who can boom kickoffs to the one yard line or beyond, then at least we can bring the current guy back for the league minimum.

Suisham is not the kind of kicker you want to make a financial committment to, because he is bound to wear out his welcome with a real tough year at some point.  Kicker is by far the most fungible position in the NFL, and you don’t want to strap yourself to the same guy for many years unless he’s got one of the best legs in the league.

The Redskins made that mistake with John Hall when they signed him to a large deal, and saw him lose all his leg strength immediately.  Nick Novak was quite the adventure himself.  Shaun Suisham has brought consistency to the situation momentarily, but if history has taught us anything about kicking percentage, it’s that the consistency we enjoyed this season is indicative of a very wild adventure to come next season.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Shaun Suisham, Prospectus Series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.