The Atlanta Falcons' kicking issues throughout the last two seasons are arguably unrivaled across the league. Younghoe Koo's nuclear 2021 season and subsequent two-year run as one of the more consistent kickers in football feels like a different era.
Between injuries and just straight up poor production, Koo's once exciting trajectory took a Peregrine-like dive, forcing the Falcons to pivot and endure the angst of a kicking game that was at best incosistent, and at worst miserable.
The Falcons now turn to the NFL's most accurate kicker over the last 3 seasons in veteran leg and former New York Jet Nick Folk. The 41-year-old's career resurgence has flown under the radar for most NFL fans outside of the Big Apple.
How much longer can the Atlanta Falcons trust Nick Folk to be elite?
Folk has quietly put up a field goal percentage of 93.4% over the last six seasons, which would tie him for the best ever career average in league history. It's a truly great run from one of the league's oldest players.
The one thing Folk won't necessarily give you at this stage of his career are the 60+ yard bombs that more and more kickers across the league are knocking down regularly. Folk's superpower isn't, well, power. It's deadly accuracy on anything less than 60. The Falcons missed 7 field goals and 2 extra points in 2025 alone. In 2024, Atlanta's kickers missed a whopping 12 field goals, worst in the league.
That's 19 missed kicks in two seasons. Nick Folk has 16 total missed kicks since 2019. Atlanta signed Folk to a two-year, $9 million deal in March, a solid deal for the veteran, and a great deal for the Falcons, if the consistency he has displayed over the last six years carries over, which it should!
But this bodes the question: for how long? The question now for Atlanta is whether Nick Folk can keep it going beyond 2026 and 2027. Father Time is truly undefeated, as the saying goes, and the 41-year-old is pushing the those boundaries of how much longer he can keep this pace up.
No, I'm not calling for the Falcons to roster two kickers at the same time. But the landscape of kicking talent is ever-changing, and it would behoove the Dirty Birds to keep their eyes peeled for a young successor to take over once he decides to hang up his cleats.
Fortunately, training camp and the preseason is the perfect time to try out kickers and keep an eye across the league for budding talent. A sharp eye now could help the Falcons avoid a future relapse at a very sneakily important position.
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